During the pandemic
A freighter hovers on the skyline -
a temporary focus as the morning
creeps down the cliff face and the sea
foams white over rocks below. This
is the time when volleyball should wake
the beach and early ageing joggers
shake the morning briskly alert.
Not now. The virus has locked that
firmly away. Squadrons of gulls
possess the beach unchallenged but the waves
reach out with their unceasing call
for some response from us, their
daily companions. Well, this is how we reply –
our longing gaze across the empty beach
to where a freighter vanishes beyond
the headland and the sun lights up
another day of waiting and suspense…
Andrew Taylor is the author of seventeen books of poetry, including Collected Poems (Salt, UK 2004), The unhaunting (Salt, UK 2009), and Impossible Preludes (Margaret River Press, 2016). He has published much literary criticism, and written the libretti for two operas, as well as translating poetry from German and Italian. In 1975 he co-founded Adelaide’s Friendly Street Poets, Australia’s oldest continuous public poetry reading, and later the South Australian Writers’ Centre. Since leaving Perth in 2014 he divides his time between Sydney and Wiesbaden in Germany.