Albany

Reneé Pettitt-Schipp

Torndirrup
Bald Head, Albany

At the end of the world
there will be Welcome Swallows to greet you

and a drum beating polar
pulse against granite’s head

at the end of the world
water threading down throat will be your manna
sun unseasonal, sky triumphant

though it is still, you will not hear the whale
sing her calf in as cargo ships slip, cerulean
ghosts, steel nose steered to haze

here you will learn your body’s limits
sitting on skull of rock, you remember
your own joints, see you are
a beast of teeth and sinew

and the land does speak, though
not in a way you might expect
a low sound, slow, like the first
sound, volcanic, ember and ice
a weathered remembering

a waiting place
heavy, leaving you light
and freed from speaking

walking back, the islands
are unknowable and blue

there is no lighthouse girl now
to hail your departure
just the lighthouse
the leaving

— —

Kardarup Addresses a Passing Pedestrian on the Railway Bridge
Mt Melville Granite Outcrop, Albany

Cloud’s correspondent, billow of slow erosion holding the hill
once silenced under sea, the rock of me heard word of the wind

exposed by water’s retreat, my deep note tones
through sound of streets - an evocation, an invitation

what you find hard in me is what you cannot conceive
I am an eternal witness to now, the future in which you do not feature

I began as the earth’s first words, an enormous vowel rising
like a bubble from its breast. I am the Oh? over whatever the city may say

I am an uneasy question on your horizon. I am more-than-you
mineral of you in unending dialogue with the history of your bones.