Only Guesswork

Published in Australian Poetry Anthology Vol. 10, Aug 2023, an earlier version first published as ‘Swimmer’s Shoulders’ in Baby Teeth Journal, 2019

I find him standing naked

stranded in the barbed shallows

of a mangrove forest.

In the dark, I barely recognise him

from old photos. His smile

is contaminated. I don’t see myself

in his eyes. How could I?

But I hear the ghost of my laughter  

caught in his throat like a six-pack yoke

choking a gull.

He hesitates to wade closer,

open his mouth to say something maybe?

I doubt he’s set foot       

on dry land in decades.

Mum told me he had swimmer’s shoulders.

Now his bones poke

through tinsel-tangled crab pots.   

His face is sallow under a biblical beard

as he toes the shallows                         

like a kid afraid of deeper water.

He’s missed an awful lot.

His children have raised their own children.

His wife has passed. I want to fill him in

on everything but fear most of what I know

is only guesswork.

Before I can coax him ashore

words scuttle from his lips like a pale tide

of ghost crabs — burying me.