POETRY

Beachmaster

Scanning the face of a crestfallen wave

He sees his life collapsing to a close,

A foaming comber racing to its grave.

But after that one, there are all of those:

The ranks of the unbroken, the young men

Completely green, queuing to take their turn

To die so that the sea might live again.

That much it took him all his life to learn.

Propped on her elbow in the burning sand,

The latest Miss Australia views it all

As one vast courtship. With a loving hand

She strokes her thigh as one by one they fall,

Those high walls in the water. Look at her,

But shade your sad glance carefully, old man –

For she will never see you as you were,

A long way out, before the end began.

-- The Monthly, April 2009