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Shirley Geok-lin Lim
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Newcastle Beach (For Kerrie Coles and Brian Joyce)
At 6 a.m. I set off for the Pacific, her heaving bosom stretched between rival lovers gazing from opposite beaches.
Silicate, shell and stone roil beneath her touch, back and forth, groaning, while she slips away and toward, teases sun rising and setting, and the surfer men come daily.
I also adore her, threaded to her fine eyebrow horizons, changeful swells that raise my thirst no matter how much I swallow.
I can never be a woman like her, forever wet, incipiently violent even when calmed. In Newcastle young boys and older throw their bodies
passionately at her each morning, naked male skin carried toward dark rock and cars. By sides of streets they strip, wriggle into work clothes, as day
collapses into schools, offices, coal-mines and their women's arms, awake and sullen in the world of dry air. They are mermen, stolen away from their mothers' hips.
And I? Drawn early down to Bogie Hole, treading the slippery convict-shattered stone steps, descend to the maddened
slamming of her spittle against tumbled boulders, gulp the white and yellow sprays that break, withdraw and break, in digital seconds never returning. Like our men
moving on to other bodies, while the Ocean Woman breathes in, breathes out, breathes in, cradling her surfers past danger and drowning.
Bogie Hole
Before that old crone curse, arthritis, comes down on me, I walk up Newcastle Beach to Bogie Hole, where the governor
had a pool carved out of ancient basalt by Irish convicts. Surf smashes on the rough hewn blocks thrice every minute
it seems–and white foam sprays in ceaseless upsurges of power. What power, I ask, as I peer over the handrails, studying
sea-moss slime-slippery steps cut into cliff face steep down to Bogie Hole, studying as if a curious text
the heart skips over, falling in love with falling, before backing off from the savor of salt fatalism.
Not yet, my feet say, stepping away. Today, for the first time I see dolphins jumping above the surf line,
black fins racing over the Pacific natural as my feet walking in sunshine along Bathers' Way.
What has brought me to Newcastle no one knows, least of all me. Blue skies and Pacific air the same
as home, leaving home is mere practice for leaving all, all the leavings learned again and again,
until goodbye becomes addictive, the last look behind, the first look forward,
what you carry everywhere and everyday. Temporary living is what childhood taught me.
Packing up, sleeping on others' mattresses, and always hungry for the new morning, and night
to be endured, supperless, sharp as a paring knife peeling another brown spot.
Writing a poem
(At the Lock Up)
The air is buzzing. Someone near by is operating a giant machine. He's scrubbing a just sold building with a high powered hose. None of us are listening,
although we are each hopeless before this dizz-dizz-dizz. If it was a monstrous radiated beetle, we couldn't be more helpless. It's eating up the hours
as if they were the sweet nectar of day, which they are. It is impossible to think or write. Its buzz takes away feelings, takes over ears, is drilling a hole
in a loose tooth as you sit in history's dental chair, frantic and still, the drill hammering gums until only spit oozes, dribbles, spills over, fills
cavities you didn't know you had, only the drill lives in your head, only the sharp dull dizz-dizz-dizz. This is how the poem ends, dizz-dizz. . . .
Dating
(At the Hunter Street Mall)
I
went on another date with my writing today. We've been dating for a long time. I
don't know why we keep meeting. It never ends in sex, although sometimes it's
led to my reading a book in bed. Often he does not bother to appear. I wait and
wait, throat burning in dread, my tight chest overflowing with aches and burrs
of anxiety, until I cannot bear the humiliation, even if no one is there, no
one's watching, and I don't care, I finally leave, abject and alone, for
something else, a nut muffin, or worse, a plate of limp over-salted French
fries. I never get really angry. I wish I would, and then maybe I'd say goodbye.
But
when he does turn up, I'm fascinated by his blather, it can throw a surprise
like an amateur hitting an underhanded blow. Yet I've heard most of his stories
so many times I can end his lines for him. You could say I find him a bore, so I
don't know why I keep listening.
He's
capable of mumbling. Between duhs and ums he may say something I like, and I
carry it back in my mouth, imagining it's a bit of worm a magpie crams into the
hungry crop of its chick, and I take it out when I am alone, greedy, before I
actually swallow it.
We've
been dating like this since I was nine. I wouldn't call him a pedophile but he's
not a big brother either. No, it's not a healthy relationship, although it isn't
exactly sick. And, yes, he's created problems, particularly with girlfriends who
get jealous because of his attentions. They don't see how long-suffering I've
been. My husband doesn't care. He understands first love comes first. Besides,
he's my last love, and they don't offer the same fruit, apples to bananas. I get
fed up, today, feeling my age, and want to sit in the shade instead,
eavesdropping on busy hummingbirds pillaging fuschias and lilies. They're attractive even
if empty-headed. Still, every April, they lay their eggs, and at least one
fledging sticks around till summer ends.
Shark Story
I've seen him hobble on one long strong leg, the other a dangling stump, third a crutch, in swimming shorts and tee, and sit by Nobby's Beach, on the wood-slatted bench near the hot parking lot and sucking surf tucked distant meters away. He said this sandy stretch, the boast of Newcastle, appears like acres of salt tears he hadn't shed when they'd lifted him out of Shark Alley winters ago, after the juvenile gray snagged the limb from him, harder to cross with hobble and crutch and one good leg than he'd first imagined. Most afternoons between lunch and sunset crowds he sits watching the black-suited amphibian boys hurry with bee-waxed boards into the waves. Yes, they do look like elegant seals in and out of ocean. Ignore his gaze that says nothing except wonder where among the particles of the Pacific his flesh and blood now surge with the spindrift and its tide, sensation of thigh and calf and foot and toes clasping like that bite threshing its fish head still in the surf most afternoons on Nobby's Beach.