My ship ‘Foursquare' awaits repair <br />in Hobart Port's deepwater haven. <br />Sister steamship ‘Vanity Fair' <br />will bring the engine part's replacement. <br />So, with many days to spare <br />I seek the untamed western spaces; <br />the Point where oceans come unfurled <br />which some have called the edge of the world. <br /> <br />Blackwood, Blue Gum, Huon Pine, <br />fine-grained Leatherwood, smooth and limber, <br />burlwood, fiddleback, swirled or lined; <br />the 'Foursquare's' hull is packed with timber. <br />Now I walk where the live trees shine <br />and lacework folds of lichen shimmer, <br />watched by keen White Goshawk spies <br />with sharp resentful dark red eyes. <br /> <br />The rattle of Hardwater ferns, <br />the silent tread of green moss carpets, <br />out to where the salt wind burns <br />the coastal heath and buttongrasses. <br />Here the clean blue ocean spurns <br />the river's tannin brown advances. <br />Here on rocks dead trees are cast <br />and unchecked Roaring Forties blast. <br /> <br />If I could see ten thousand miles <br />there'd be the coast of Argentina. <br />Nothing in between defiles <br />the curving ocean's aquamarine and <br />this is why the Point beguiles <br />for nowhere else is air washed cleaner. <br />Why then has a sudden gloom <br />weighed me with impending doom? <br /> <br />From Argentina to Brazil <br />my line of sight is northward drifting. <br />Thoughts of home and wife instil <br />a dread where once they were uplifting. <br />Dry stick Petty always spills <br />disaster and our lives are rifting. <br />Deep forebodings are the tithe <br /> of wedding a girl who's young and lithe. <br /> <br />Fresh algae clings as salt waves drub, <br />defying rollers' rhythmic scrolling. <br />Tenacious orange lichen crusts <br />embed their roots in bare rock shoulders. <br />Trees were cut, I've smelt their blood, <br />but seen them dressed in bark and foliage. <br />Now I watch their white bones hurled <br />from this, the tilting edge of the world.<br /><br />Diane Hine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/captain-bryce-in-tasmania/
