Archipelago

My head is an island, my moods
scattered archipelagos.

Family,
a bigger continent.

Shearwater burrows pock my dunes,
secret runnels collapsing
my soft embankments.

Knots of clouds churn,
darkening my brilliant days.

I sing the dawn chorus,
rumble the low disgruntled grunt
of the stout grey goose.

Feel the grit of me,
the stony recesses.

I leak brackish tears.
Sooty tea trees sweep
the edges of my sad lagoons.

Growing up is an incoming tide,
a distant murmuration.

This island, a place
I must leave.

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Rachael Wenona Guy is an emerging poet who’s work has appeared in journals such as Overland, Sleepers Almanac, Mascara, Negative Capability, Australian Poetry Journal and the anthology Shaping the Fractured Self: poetry of chronic illness and Pain 2017, UWAP. In 2015 she was shortlisted for the Whitmore Manuscript Prize.