Ocean Song at South Head
I am born of the folk of the tropical coasts,
salt-rimmed hands my inheritance. I trace
the vestiges of webs between my fingers—
folds printed with the pearlescent stripes
of nautilus shells. My foremothers woke
with lucent skins—sun dribbling through
tassels of palm fronds, the drone of surf,
the screeching of seabirds, air glazed
with the gold of dawn. Tide and breeze—
these were the songs of my people.
I remember hillocks heaving, bent windward,
pulsing with monsoon preludes. My fingers
linger on black and white keys, morphing
to coral, palms tingling with the ancestral memory
of hemp-net brocades. In my dreams,
I stretch them, combing old shores,
watching a shoal of souls sweeping skywards
across the glitter of Gemini. Now I have crossed
familiar oceans, made a home on sands
that offered refuge, shores that held
the wanderer in me. Here, on Gadigal land,
ancient and unceded, waves surge and crash
in lush arpeggios. The waters sift new songs—
I tell the rumbling ocean at South Head that I
am the seeding of old sea whisperers too,
though I stand here on the rugged cliffs
calling in an unlikely tongue. The tide answers,
my fingers dripping teal on canvas—
and all my keys grow bright with salt,
and all my notes brim with the ocean.