Two Poems

by Jane Frank

Going Fishing

When I first saw your spaceship far off, heading for home …
                                                                Helen Dunmore

Today you are going fishing--
you wear a bucket hat
your practical hands preparing hooks and lures
lines and bait
in feathery courtyard shade
seal dog at your feet 

             I remember our first meeting
             light through blinds striping my face
             your reassuring message 
             transmitted in monochrome
             through dark salt waves

You will sit on the old wooden pier today 
or on rocks around the point
out of sight 
silver haze past the horizon
moving in your eyes
the liquid almost-silence a fuel you inhale
oblivious to time

             six months later you lay in a cave of flowers--
             ventura purple lisianthus
             and sunflowers — the midwives 
             remarking that you felt no pain
             no need to break the calm 
             early morning hours with crying

You’ll throw the catch back--
the summer whiting or yellow brim— 
laugh at the thought of the fish 
you caught swimming into a second life
just as you’ve swum 
back home to me 

Crossover

​Lunarness 
            pulling to me on calm thermals.
A land of crescents:

            dogs and waves and salt-
            striped creeks. 
The wind is loud but it’s quiet inside my head 

now the hard words are leaving,
the last ones 
            rattling like clinkers in a glass jar.

I want to learn 
a new language of crossover,
            the way these bodies write on the sea, 

letting the elements 
            bear them 
in balance with the brightly coloured kites 

dipping gently in the sky, 
the music
            of low tide where there is no one to disappoint,

only small reliable waves –
three even rows of them – 

            the island a washed-up rag 
on the horizon, 
            the crabs dancing near my feet.

Jane Frank’s latest chapbook is WIDE RIVER (Calanthe Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared most recently in Antipodes, Burrow, Other Terrain, Backstory, Takahe, Not Very Quiet, The Bengaluru Review, Meridian (APWT/Drunken Boat, 2020) and Grieve vol 8 (Hunter Writers Centre, 2020). Her unpublished manuscript Wolf Moon was shortlisted for the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in 2020 and she was joint winner of the Queensland Poetry Festival Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award in 2019. Jane teaches in creative writing at Griffith University. Read more of her work at https://www.facebook.com/JaneFrankPoet/ and https://janefrankpoetry.wordpress.com/