Earl Livings is an award-winning poet and fiction writer who has published two poetry collections, Libation (Ginninderra Press) and Further than Night (Bystander Press), and a fantasy verse novel, The Silence Inside the World (Peggy Bright Books). He lives in Melbourne with his wife and their groaning bookshelves. (www.earl-livings.com)
Sphinx Rock
Sorrento Back Beach, September 2024
More than fifty years ago,
you hitchhiked here from the city,
a three-day skin-diving adventure
with a work friend. You camped
on the cliff above, played
sniper games along trails
messy with tea-tree, wattle,
sea-box, swam at twilight
in placid low-tide pools, dove
into the silence of darkness,
told ghost stories, teenage dreams
around the campfire shielded
from Antarctic winds, slept
under the simmering stars,
their messages a bare whisper.
Today, not the accident
in the Beetle that picked you up,
no injuries, thumbs out again.
Not the flathead you speared
at a pier on the way home,
filleted, dumped in the fridge.
Not the times picking up shells
and playing in chilly rockpools
with lovers and children on access.
But the swallow that greets you
as you climb to the lookout,
the bees sucking at Sweet Pea Shrubs,
the splurge of green lichen
beside the sand and stone trail,
that willy-wagtail dashing off,
your brief meditation on a bench
overlooking mounds of green
threaded with sand, dazzled,
the twisted boughs, dark hollows,
the rocks sculptured by sea,
wind, salt, mythic to real,
the Sphinx reading the seething waves,
the koala quizzical with the cliff,
the giant bird breathing fire,
and the pink sandstone slab
you sit on to wait, breath
the charm of sun and spray,
for each ninth wave to fold
history into its thunder,
hug it back to sea.