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Excerpt: I sit so still dotterels with speedy legs, as if God has put them into permanent overdrive, chirp and chirrup about me, turning over stones and shells with deft twists of their beaks. Downwind, cluster the black-capped terns, important as business men at a convention, inclining their heads to the state of the weather and tide and the lolling icebergs at the foot of the world where they are bound. It hardly seems reasonable to expect a bird so slight, so sleek and well groomed to set course for such an elemental battleground. That’s life but. Tenuous. Held in the balance till something tips it over. The eagle, whose wings lift the sky and my embattled soul, holds death in the glowing amber of its eye. My mild-eyed friends, the red-legged oyster catchers, stab and rend soft mollusk and flesh of crab. My own bait is set, a mud-worm wriggling an invitation to a whiting, bream or flathead whose hunger will launch it into eternity. I like to sit and watch. Not interfere too much in the process of life and death. And isn’t fishing the perfect excuse for doing nothing? Ostensibly that is. Limbs lying loose do not necessarily mean the brain is in neutral. And mine seldom disengages. Except when I’m making love. Or making death. I cannot read like Vi does. The letters blur as the sun spars with the white page. Vi’s always at me to wear sunglasses. But my nose sweats and the bits behind my ears press on bone and you’ve got to keep cleaning the wretched things, wiping off the salt spray. Besides, I do not care for the intrusion of glass between me and the world. I like to see things as they are, as the good Lord set it all down in his ineffable wisdom. Vi, how many thousands of times have I said her name. Vi for violet, sweeter than a rosebud, covered all over from head to toe, covered all over with sweet vi-i-o-lets. I used to sing that to her in the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth days. Once, going so far as to strew violets purchased for the occasion, over her naked breasts and belly. An extravagance of gesture she loved. Not really me – silly bugger of a teacher – ex now, but still chalk to the core. Close, craggy, canny. Could always open up with Vi though, relax. They don’t have pretty names like that any more – women don’t. Flower names. Daphne, Rose, Daisy, Marigold, Violet - you can forget Pansy! Old fashioned names implying what a man wants to believe, the innate softness and sweetness of women, exhaling perfume from their petals, even as they wither and die.  © Rose Allan Published Antipodes, a North American Journal of Australian Literature, Dec. 2006 Awarded first prize, FAW Manly, 2005 |
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