Sarah Frost
The river under the trees
soft, dark, still.
Black the water that
reflects webbed branches, bending low.
The sea is ebbing:
it has left a beach bare as bone.
Pale, it stretches empty
hands towards the receding light.
People came to the river mouth;
Their voices folded like woodsmoke into the afternoon air
Holding them in an embrace brown as sun-warmed skin
Within the womb of the milkwoods’ quiet shade.
The lagoon shears open into the dusk
All I find here is absence, absence
A girl swimming the far bank
Leaves a wake of white that disperses
Like a cloud in wind, irretrievable.
Featured on 18 February 2021
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