Wye River Summers

From just up here on the olive lip of mountain mileage that pooling mouth below, half salt but also hill-fresh, could seem a lagoon. On its low point surmounting asphalt and the roll of waves sits the verandaed pub, plain focus of holiday shorescape. During the great forest fires decades of my sap ago, bluegum branches crackled and roared: houses flared wide, too. Behind the bay of my Then, buried under musk and rot, there lie quaint remains of an old woodcutters’ railway, hardly more productive now than a tangled indentation. This aromatic forest can just about swallow anything – but holidays and December will flaunt over all that. Kids will arrive at our sea-green seaside, rumbustious as can be. No dark fin offshore today by the grace of Santa, hot though in his white whiskers and familiar laugh.

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