Shadow Stands Up #13

13

No shadows for a while now,
nothing standing up, only
a warning about the word
‘trill’ came to mind, then a man
silhouetted against the
sky-line behind the sand-dunes
at St Clair, then the poet
Baxter came to mind, then the
man silhouetted against
the gusty southern sky was
gone, in spite of everything
I didn’t ask of language
birds were ‘trilling’ in the bush
we walked through to get back to
the car parked above the kelp
by the cold salt water baths –
Baxter couldn’t help it, he
always saw more than was there,
always the shadows of things
for instance the swirling kelp
at St Clair wasn’t seaweed,
it was a goddesses’s hair
or some such, a kraken with
its arms around his neck. Me,
I’m back where I started, on
Jervois Road walking past the
Herne Bay Dental Centre whose
signage reassures me it’s
because my smile means so much.

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