NORFOLK SOUNDINGS

Silver-haired wisps

From yardarms of spookish pine

Hanging like Spanish moss

Night thickens Mt Pitt

Lags linked by brandglow lug

Petrels plump down on platters

Ruffed in red

The Providence lurk

Cicatrices by the score

Scar rust-ringed bark

Bloodwood bleeds, iron would

Pannikins of crimson ink

Stain history

                   Seven years at large, Duffy

Holed up in hollow pine, wall-eyed

Three redcoats clap the bolter

To swing in Kingston Town

A curse i’ throat

Same troopers three

Fishing for smaller fry

Scuffed clean from scurf-stormed rocks

Headstones keel in southern gales

The curse of Barney Duffy

Polynesian adzes

Turtles butchered for frolic

Salt House cures rotting hams

Mrs Lasher Morisset drowns in rails’ shrieks

Turtle Bay:  shallow draught, unsound anchor

Rattus rattus

Scrawny, grey-hide, cat-striped vermin

Hollow-eyed, scowly-jowled

Snaggle-nailed heathens

Bane of paradise


Michael Small                               January 2-19, 2001

published Poetry Matters, issue 2, summer, 2006