The Wednesday Poem

Trace Evidence

If you want to know about storms at sea, unseen currents
running deep, shark attacks, red-tides or why the bay is full of
stingers, study patterns left by tides on seashores.

Stories of the deep are told by these lines ~ tracery on
beaches at Umhlanga, Umdloti, Amanzimtoti may show a slow
passage of whales, drownings at sea, a promise of luminescence.

In Namibia, garnet veils crown crests of dunes blown by
katabatic winds. If you follow running brush motifs along the
Skeleton Coast, you may know how the Himba hid from a storm of
sand, where amethysts lie buried.

A foetus of five months has an alphabet of tented arches,
whorls and loops upon its fingertips imprinted. Written in amniotic
oceans, like the language of winds on dunes, waves on shores,
these contours rise, curl, fall, tell the tale, bring it to the surface of the skin.

Which line, heart or head or fate, directed him to
Witwatersrand ~ ridge of white waters? Led him to a man with
murder on his mind?

Which, on my palm, took me close to the cold Atlantic, to
that vast farm with my brother, lighter than at birth, in my hands?

Follow the path through rough Renosterveld scrub, into the valley
of old oaks. All tracks, life’s blood, lead downward to drink. Lift
the lid. Tip fragments of bone, grit, thick ash on a carpet of acorns,
shrivelled leaves.
Speak his name.

A wild, desolate cry ~

Steppe Buzzard high in the clean blue air.

Gillian Berry

Gillian Berry After teaching drama in South Africa, I lived in Brazil before working at a Children’s Theatre in California. I taught at Steiner schools, moved into adult education at Findhorn in Scotland and used Jungian Sandplay in creative workshops in Cape Town before coming to Australia 10 years ago.