When I was a teenager I would go fishing with my aboriginal friends from a wave cut platform that jutted into the Arafura Sea. The sea would change colour from dull green to blue according to the time of day. In the dry season it would be cool in the morning and evening and quite warm at noon. When the tide came in we would dive off the platform and swim with our dogs, we would dry off quite quickly after we got out of the water. We could tell where the fish were by the activity of the seagulls who would follow the swarms of sardines and sometimes mullet. When they came near to shore we would cast out weightless lines with live bait and capture the big pelagic Queen fish, known locally as skinny, or Turrum. Later on in my life when I was under duress and in pain I was advised by doctors to visualise my most beautiful place and mentally transport myself there, because in that place I could avoid the pain, my most beautiful place was that wave cut platform.
The one that got away
Lost another poem
in the waves of
the computer today.
I tried to reel it in
but the line snapped
and with a flash
it went swimming away to Samoa.
So here I sit with
hook baited
feeling those good
vibrations in the line
and waiting to catch the big one.
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