Sandstone dust swirled into the westerly
and settled off Ball’s Head; the shark
rose from its rock, then slid into Berrys Bay.
Gliding towards the deep water.
Francis watched the artist who carved it
‘brush death from his wits’ again.
The windy sky stretched before him
and his old interlocutor, the sun, flared
on the windscreens of cars cruising the road
near the council fence in need of paint.
Francis knew time as a whirlpool.
He sees the old baker’s horse he loved, swishing
its tail, flies on its back, the oily harness.
The straightjacket and regimental clock
swing through the night of his dream
and a shark from this harbour-dreaming.
He watches the carcass of the old horse
as it is over-run by taunting boys
pulling a dead tail, the black mane.
In the landscape of his mind language gathers
in storm clouds, the lightening
carves grooves in sandstone; waves break
on the oily rocks, full of sparks.
The city surrounds the harbour, electric
with clarity, the tide’s indigo mirror.
The leathery wings of flying-foxes
across centuries, out from the glow.
Seagull-shit streaks the coal wharf
white flakes on pylons reflect the tug-light.
Francis runs his fingers across the shark.
Night, hard night. Young homeless men
around a drumfire making pea and hambone soup
with their last few pence.
Light from Pinchgut, above a swimming convict,
catches batwings, a sea-mullet in mid leap,
the ghost of a grey-nurse in Grandfather’s sails.
Channels, the lead-line, corks. Difference
with the dark of the moon and the hatched whitebait.
The Head is alive.