Monsoon winds climbing into the evening, reminds me of being in India, almost two years ago which seems like yesterday and like forever-ago. I’m here in Darwin preparing for Tuesday’s 11AM farewell to the duffle bag of poems, from Stokes Hill Wharf. Happily, there are a few days to explore Darwin with the guidance of one of my truest friends and her husband-to-be and my husband-not-to-be-but-ten-years-means-multitudes. Compared to the expenses incurred from flights during this project, the Darwin journey is free since I purchased plane tickets on my Frequent Flyers and am being housed in a friend’s home, in Fannie Bay. I am also smiling thanks to recent support from The Shark Island Foundation, towards the film component of ‘Sea Things’. Phew.
My body was cooled in twenty laps of a pool at Nightcliff, enveloped in expanse of water and lots of babies with little guts, wandering the pool edges, looking for their reflections. It was only a few poems ago I was in Brisbane with Luke Beesley, sitting under a tree, reading poems and sharing sea tales with school students and a Captain. The Brisbane handover was, as each handover is, memorable for the good spirit that flowed from the poems to the poet to the mariner. In a few minutes I’ll head out to the Ski Club from belated Birthday drinks and feel young in comparison to the surrounding rocks and owners of them.
