So it goes.

With apologies to Kurt Vonnegut.

I stand amongst a wreath
of antlered trees.
The hills, cave-coloured,
blue with rain, seem
to sway like kelp.
From somewhere
in the deep
comes the taste
of saltwater, a sharpness
like the needles at my feet.

I dream myself back
into sunny colours.
The red cliffs of Mornington,
as warm as one minute
into death, like a brick split
open, or a skinned carcass,
the blade of time
slipped from throat
to tail. The knife abandoned
is the slither of water,

its tip making
the slightest dimple
on the skin-coloured sand.
The infinite sky peers down
and sees itself, complicit.
And its soul; black,
shark-shaped, predatory,
stays away from the shallows.
A blood-spot
of reflected cloud,

at the heart of it all,
retracts like an anemone
as the shadow passes over.
But now I see
these colours bleeding
into each other
as the sun clots on
the blue horizon
of hills and trees.
The cliffs decay

into a kelpish mist.
There is no escaping the cold.