One For The Livey

One For The Livey

One For The Livey

You enter the suburbs,
drive down through the fair blue distance
swelling at the road’s end,
the luminous window
of brine, the sea
turning grey at the edges
each evening, then black
where houses rise between trees
like brown and red pebbles and stones
left lying by an invisible river,
the wraith-like shadows
of men, their lovers and children
flowing over asphalt
to evaporate at the edge of the bush.

You are always traversing this city.
The moment you take the side from a livey,
spread it over steel
and drape it over your head
like a photo of an aurora or poem,
the surface of a fish tank
set on the jetty
starts shaping and reshaping light,
cold motion
considering your face
or the livebait’s silver frame
both free of living
now it is all over, pushed closer
to the way things are.

So you drive them down
to the beach, elbows
knocking the tank
strapped to the seat beside you,
liveys furling
and unfurling in water as you drive
and occasionally
they leap against the glass lid,
each thrash
carving a second from the many
as you do, head butting at air,
wanting this world to give you another.

You give it to them, finally.
Holding one gently,
almost in love with the sweetness
implied by the life you want it, carnally,
to give, you glide your finger
from the shoulder
to the small of its back,
note the translucent knots of the spine
humming inside like the sense of a prayer
and, careful not to pierce it
push the hook through the shoulder,
the whole world balanced
between the mouth and the tip of the tail,
the shuddering flick and flick
spinning the line into science.

This is where you pause, feet
sinking into darkness
as it spreads from the east
over the long reef,
a woman and a man in the distance
bending to poke at debris
just visible in the pink light –
some plastic, a bottle
or an embryo sucked from the belly of the city
and washed here, somehow
more alive where it lies
in the sand, tail
curled like a seahorse,
pungent head swelling toward vision.

The lights of the town
seem sharper then, an echo of stars
rising in a plume that breaks
open and then breaks again
along the backbone of the world.

You move to the last reef
of Sydney sandstone,
look the livey in the eye
and throw it with grace into darkness,
its brothers, the bat and the swallow
lifting their heads as it flies in an arc
and vanishes into the sea.