The whole of the night fishing sea

Gareth Robinson

First off it looked washed up

sprawled on the kelp-coloured rocks

in the body bag of its waterproof skin

but shapeless, a leather suitcase

too much in the wallowing surf

until it yawned, and it stretched,

and raised the long reposing muscle of itself

to haul up out of sleep, shrug, flex and twist

around to grooming

a hind flipper raking like an ivory comb

front one spread in a fan’s ribbed gestures

as we cautious strangers tossed a smile around between us

exhilarated under the deepening indigo dusk

and someone said beach ball, and someone said circus,

as it rose up tall and made an arch like an incoming wave

all that swelling energy, the pelagic impulse,

and you felt that this one in its wildness

might balance the whole of the night fishing sea

on the whiskered tip of its nose.

GARETH ROBINSON lives on the Illawarra coast south of Sydney. His work has appeared in Australian Book Review, Cordite, Meanjin, the Ekphrastic Review and on the shortlist for the Peter Porter Poetry Prize.