By the beach edge,
tide laps in, tide laps out
Sun sets, moon rises

Trees and marram grass sway,
smooth like liquid
The night breeze caresses them,
opening dimensions between senses
Shimmer-hum of the sea-wind

Haunted trees, frightened leaves
Moonlight filters through branches,
a strobe lighting
dancing in our retinas
Friend or foe?

A tension between us

Background becomes foreground,
eerily swinging into focus

Our minds are fragile webs
in open space
We have been caught in push/pull,
imagining ourselves to be separate, solid beings,
cages without birds

On a porch by an abandoned beach house
we sit in a swinging chair,
its creak loud to sensitive ears

Mrs Ramsay prepares dinner inside
while Mr Ramsay strides before us with furrowed brow
Lily Briscoe paints the scene

I thought I was Mr Ramsay
and Rose was Mrs Ramsay
but maybe I’m Lily

A lighthouse glows on the horizon

Echinacea and chamomile
in the crumbling back garden
are effulgent with fragrance,
even as stony walls decay

I turn to Rose
“Thank you for everything
immersed in abundance,
I only noticed scarcity”

Distant clouds crack open
luminescent lightning
ecstatic electricity

Rose runs off across the pebbles
in terror and delight,
laughing like Milarepa,
at one with the elements

The beach turns into a hieroglyph;
her figure is a question mark

Thoughts dissolve in reverberations of thunder

A crow soars through the air,
in the air channel between life and death
it looks down with indifference

We are two nodes in Indra’s net,
two non-local particles a quantum leap apart

Further down the beach
a Yoruba tribe dances around a fire
multi-coloured tunics —
beating of drums —
fireflies flutter —