reef swings summer tides at cliffs
arcing the fisher to schnapper beds
through slow seas
a day and I won't budge
steer low for wave falls
and clinker's keel skids on rock
the young bloke's is the haul
to sand, my fingers steady
on a useless tiller
back square against
the seethe of reef's plunge
2. charted
from the gravel path
over the high headland
feet have pushed narrow trails
through kanuka
to sandstone's fall
at boulders and waves
on summer mornings
we kids charted them in pencil
on a pad page
our lines were precise
our own
noting a wartime concrete pill box
half filled with mud stinking of crap
or where sandal toes suddenly dip
at a crumble of cliff edge and ahead
the Gulf islands
endless rollers and faint
as after-image the Coromandel Range
the map perhaps fell from its pocket
long before the grandparents porch
3. colours
close to where
capt Cook was killed
or his memorial
there is I think a cove
in cliffs
but certainly sea pitching us up and down
among a million
indigoes
and James Cook quiet
at our shoulders
calculating from the ocean colours
depth cold speed wind
and the Yorkshire voice
ordering the deadly pinnace down
precisely angled into dip or swell
and oars heaving shore nearer
through waves
from scrolls
of Sophocles