Summer Delicious

Today's taste of Australia... (from the land of the Awabakal and Worimi people)

I have found some sumptuous ocean poetry on Substack - words to turn over in my mouth and relish, like sea polished pebbles on a beach. (Rebecca Hooper writing at “Between Two Seas” is a writer I highly recommend).

The sea, also, resides in all of us - our salty cells surely feel the grip and pull of the moon - we are ourselves mostly just self aware water.

Today’s poem really is “Today’s poem,” scribbled in my notebook this morning as I sat with a self indulgent coffee at the seaside cafe here - pictured below - after submitting myself to the surge and splash of the Pacific Ocean, on this beach in my old home town where my first memories of the sea were sown. It’s still officially Spring here, rather than Summer, but it was one of those late Spring days when you can pretend that Summer has come already…..

Summer Delicious

This is the sea
taking great green 
licks of the land –
a hot Summer 
ice cream of sand and
sun saturated flesh,
oil basted and baked.

All the rush and wash
of the waves fills my ears
the way a lung
full of air fills a swimmer –
urgent, instinctive, unstoppable
then used up
metabolised
gone… aching 
for replenishment.


This is the sea’s breathing,
on and on and on beyond
the warm sunlit shallows
of consciousness,
sinking deeper,
where whales hover in blue
shadows speaking, singing;
where fish swim
oblivious of names and the moon 
pulls a whole ocean
tugging, adjusting, tucking in -
a cool clean sheet
in a giant room 
on an endless
sandy 
bed.

And yes, the day ended with a storm, as Summer days here often do. Not that it’s officially Summer here yet - we are really just in the middle of Spring - and no, although the first photo was taken today, this photo is not actually of today’s storm. You will just have to regard it as representative…

Have I passed my Poetic Licence test yet??

If you liked Summer Delicious - you might enjoy reading what my Summer became: