Hawks Bay, by Naira Mushtaq. Image courtesy of the artist.
Reaching the crest of the dune
the feeling is barely controllable
when I feast on the ocean
and the lack of you.
It rises from my skin
and catches the breeze
in a faint cloud
that floats to sea
and I wonder if unspent love
is absorbed by fish
in warm seabeds
or if it is light enough
to reach your Spanish horizon
as a glint below a mountain,
or, failing that, the source
of a Himalayan stream
or a warm pulse in a city street
that attaches to someone
else’s grand scheme
the same way our organs do if
we sign them over to science.
Perhaps desire moves in atoms,
embedding itself in other hearts,
recycled to thaw the ice.
~ Jane Frank
Jane Frank’s poems have appeared in Australian Poetry Journal, Writ, Uneven Floor, Yellow Chair Review, Antiphon, The Lake and elsewhere in Australia and the UK. Jane teaches a range of writing disciplines at Griffith University in both Brisbane and on the Gold Coast in south east Queensland. She has just completed a PhD examining the rise of the global Book Town Movement.Â
