Let the Rip, Swimmers Shoulders & Coochie by Sean West
Let the Rip
For Kylie
You were almost gone before
I could even look around
Rip picked you up like a sudden
gust might catch
a kitesurfer and hurl
him sideways into a seaside café
I left your baby sister safe
in the arms of a family friend, turned
and swam for your life out
to where you bobbed screaming
for your mother. I will never
forget that screech as we slipped past
the beach, my body closing
the distance until my hand gripped
your doughy forearm. The noise
you were making clipped in your throat
I hauled you over my head
to your uncle who’d chased us the whole
way down. I watched him hold
you, curled safe in his arms like a prize
catch but no longer making a sound
as I let the rip carry me all the way
out until I could swim across and back
to dry land again, to you, to you.
Swimmer’s Shoulders
I find him washed up, standing naked
on the shoreline below mangroves
I barely recognise him from old photos
His smile is polluted. I do not
see myself reflected
in his eyes. How could I?
But I hear my laugh strangled
deep in his throat
like seaweed tangled in blue plastic
He hesitates to wade closer, say
something, anything. I doubt
he’s set foot on dry land in decades
Mum told me he used to have swimmer’s
shoulders, broad and strong for
a man of the ocean. He still carries them
His face is shadowed in a scraggly
beard as he stands in shallows
like a kid terrified of deeper water
His daughter has raised
her own two children
Named one after him
He’s missed an awful lot
I want to fill him in
but know I’ll miss even more
Before I can even pull him ashore
words scuttle from his lips
like ghost crabs, far too quick for me.
Coochie
I can’t remember how
young we were when
Mum drove us all the way
out to Coochiemudlo
but I remember how
she wanted us to circle
the whole island on foot, weave
knotted mangroves, scale frowning
rockfaces. I remember the sea
cucumber we found beached
far from the jetty, how
it secreted that milky
white liquid in defence against
our tiny hands, how we squealed
and dropped it. I remember
the starfish we found further
along did nothing, just lay
there vulnerable as a heart
I don’t remember why
Mum made us walk the whole
way on foot or why that starfish
reminded me so much
of you. Maybe it was the way
my sister held it so gently
and let it go when she stepped
out into the water. Maybe it was
the way it floated to the bottom.
Executive Producers
Elliot Cameron
Daniel Henson
Karolina Ristevski
Sue White
