At night we'd hear the roaring seas
From the back room of the house
And wondered how safe we'd be from a tsunami
In the morning we'd eat breakfast at the bench
And wander out across the street
Scramble through the dunes, and the hardy foliage
Jump brackish ponds with sandbanks
And I'd watch the surfers with a kind of tempered awe
That they could be so far from the shore
But I was almost drowned once and couldn't step past my ankles
And the curiosity of rockpools never found me
I remained not at all curious to meet a blue-ringed octopus
or cone snail. I kept an unhealthy distance
Someone told me they could sting across a metre or two
Ever vigilant, I knew my best hope would be to outrun the sting
And, of course, to keep my hands out of the rockpools
And we'd return home, and I'd shower,
And the water smelled the way it tasted
And I'd play, running on the deck,
I fell and speared my knee with wood,
And it only bled a little but it became infected and I picked it and the scar is still visible
And we'd drive home,
but when we stopped in Leongatha for the lolly shop
I'd forget my fears for a while.