till the sheep moved on to another track and the way was clear
down to the beach where, what seemed to us to be seals
rolling in swells, were men floating on boards in black suits
near green-black rocks. Expecting to see a row of canoes
and a beach strewn with axe-heads and shells (the farmer
said it was a good shell beach), found nothing but
unburdened sand and a few live stilts and oyster-catchers
and a dead penguin, its head bent back and throat cut full
of flies, half buried in kelp and sand. . . The boy sensed
something: wouldn't follow the ball into the slimy creek,
wouldn't go behind flax to pee, preferred to make holes
in sand, then ran naked to the far end of the beach muttering
to himself, wanting food, water, while we looked for traces
of blood, took photos of air and pretended to be somewhere
no one had been before. Wandered through lupins imagining
houses, domestic arrangements, gardens where a village
once stood in the midst of fire. Found blackened stone, pieces
of dinner-plate with blue Chinese willow design, and holes
where long-beaked birds had dug for maggots under sand
covering some formless thing.
We had the simplest of picnics: boiled eggs, bananas, fresh
white rolls - threw scraps to sparrows, scanned the hills for tracks,
Watched the surfies grind up the gravel hill away from the beach
in their fat green vans loaded down with dripping skins.