by Emily Bartlett

We navigate familiar rocks
as if scattered by a hatted chef
with careless, exquisite precision.

Driftwood charred and bloated,
washed up, and our silence is sliced
open by the cries of seabirds.

And other pieces of whole float stiff;
crab shell, cicada wing, twig,
cast adrift, sucked into cavernous

spaces, spat into currents laced
with torpid, yellowing foam. How long
to roam before our final resting place?

You really have to wonder.

Never before has this ocean
made me afraid, except

on such days, when churning
water blurs; seclusion hoped for
but not promised beyond the waves.

Emily ‘Emmy’ Bartlett (nee Walsh) is an Australian writer, artist and Pleiadian starseed living between Sydney and Coffs Harbour, NSW. She runs a creative agency and is writing her debut novel, Ozora. Emily is the assistant editor of Plumwood Mountain Journal and loves etymology, singing and the feeling of being underwater.