"A Day at Bellingen
I come rowing back on the mauve creek, and there’s a
daylight moon
among the shabby trees,
above the scratchy swamp oaks
and through the wrecked houses of the paperbarks;
a half moon
drifting up beside me like a jelly fish.
Now the reflected water becomes, momentarily, white—
magnesium burning.
My oars
have paused, held in their hailing
stance—
are melting;
and the long water is a dove-grey rippled sand.
A dark bird hurries
low in a straight line silently overhead.
The navy-blue air, with faint underlighting;
Has gauze veil hung up within it, or a moist fresh
Smoke.
I land in the bottom of an empty paddock,
at a dark palisade
of saplings…
(Gray 1998, 126)"