Old Woman's River

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