you know when the tide comes in
the way the clear water covers the stones
and the words we have for such things
for me it's the long ferry crossing
cold winter nights
a dark harbour, the uninhabited islands
in our dreams
and it is also a kind of rheumatism
passed down
so that when we wake in the darkness
we curse our grandparents
perhaps you have not fully understood
that I'm talking about the way words come and go
while others simply haunt us
I know that you live far inland
so the sound of the sea does not scare you
but I too have turned my back on old age
only to watch the days disappearing
past the locked gate
over that cattleguard of old songs
and then the unsealed road
that works its way down
through gullies, through our ancient family stories,
past coastal scrub, its understory of forgotten phrases
the words we've never heard
this matagouri tangle of thorns
these poems
in which nothing quite seems to exist
isn't it the way words are exposed
as we say them