I am relearning how to be still.
It hasn’t come easily for a long time.
But if I can let the city take hold of me, contort my body into unrecognisable forms
and spit it out mangled, then surely here too I can surrender.
Already I can curve my ribs over the water-sculpted edges of this place.
If I lie here long enough I will become the roots of these trees, splitting the earth
and sending tumbling rust-red streams skittering into the water.
The rock will absorb me, with a gasp and a palpitation
which nobody but the grass snakes will witness.
In the purple static darkness behind my closed eyes, shapes appear.
Lace curtains, swollen veins, floating motel chairs.
Grazed shins and diving falcons.
Flotsam and jetsam.
All of them moving to the incessant rhythm of cicadas,
stuttering, breaking down, reforming.
