for my Mother
A sound between breath and utterance
as breakers crumple to spindrift.
Above the heave of eucalypts, seagulls
surf the air, the swallows loop and feed.
We sit at ease by the myrtle willow,
its fronds astir; unmoved, the hibiscus
mauvely in bud, your burgundy roses.
Blackbirds and wattlebirds stitch the trees
together: each soughing of wing feathers
a half-whisper from the unconscious.
Whenever the wind grows wilder,
forest sounds without a forest; the speech of leaves
forced into one voice. Later, silence:
dusk unfolds like a hothouse flower.