Siren Fires for August

by Dani Netherclift 

​Everything collapses.
The moon hangs low
a bottom-heavy boat
gravid with ballast

slipping snail trails, lighting
the way
for more night,
this cycle of terrible sorrows

an accumulation 
of griefs, imagine
a susurration, dead leaves
gathered, faded things

like the left scales
of butterflies 
at the ends of their lives
almost colourless,

all joy leached out,
and today, today
blew in so many wrongs
that might never

be righted, and the mild-faced moon
will not care, will never dim
the silver shine of the spill –
those bodies, drifting, their eyes

wide, mouths like funnels, and
no matter how you call
and call, they will not hear,
cannot look your way.

Dani Netherclift lives surrounded by mountains in the Victoria high country. She was the 2020 winner of the AAWP/The Slow Canoe Creative Nonfiction Prize, and has recent work in Plumwood Mountain Journal, Rabbit, Stilts, Mascara and Meniscus.