Flying to Queensland to see my Mother / Soldier Crabs

Two poems by Jayden Spillane

Flying to Queensland to see my Mother

It’s 6am.

Sydney is barely awake.

as she disappears beneath the plane wing

I trace her jagged shape –

broken plate, crystal ashtray flung against gyprock,

Rorschach stain.

The rising fog forgets the city.

Above the cloud cover,

a strange land wakes and yawns –

dawn stretching dazed across the

enormous ruffled blanket,

sheets tussled by the giant

kicking in her sleep,

still dreaming.

All is stillness here,

mist encased in a picture frame,

and I reminisce and sift through the

sun-bleached photograph,

a sleepwalker lost in

colonnades of cloud,

snow-soaked statues lining

cathedrals and castles of unspun cotton,

marble mountain ranges lurching unchanged above

acres of alabaster prairies –

frozen memories of endless places

that have never not been.

In a twist of light,

the illusion dies,

the cloud’s white knuckles buckle against their grip on time

and are smoke again.

before the end of the day,

these swollen mausoleums will vanish into

air or rain.

We’re landing in Maroochydore,

endless, straight, sun-baked ceramic

dotted with dead volcano bones.

Mount Coolum stares headless into an open ocean,

remembers being known by other names,

remembers being molten,

recalls the cracks that open and ache in her ever-shifting body.

To me, she looks the same as she did two years ago

and ten years before that.

In a few hours I will see my mother.

we will say the same words that we always do,

avoid the same words that we always do, but

she will be four months older than last time.

In two days

I will be flying home again.

The plane stops. The cabin doors open.

Everything now is eternal and temporary,

and the tarmac is wet with rain.

Soldier Crabs

You spot the soldier crabs on the beach

and bound toward them with delight –

marvel at the battalion of blueberries

balanced on matchsticks

scattered across the bay –

your smile resounding as you encounter

your Cancerian kin.

That evening, sitting in the car,

your cheeks wet with saltwater tides pushing

from your moonlit eyes,

you carry the vulnerability of crustaceans,

bare to the sun on the mudflats

scared of the gaps in their

salt-patched armour,

scurrying for the sanctuary of soft silt

to cover their careful bodies.

Deep in the night,

I sense your restlessness

as your bones lie beside me in the bed,

your long soul stretched uneasily across this city –

head nestled on the mountainside,

souls of your feet in the sea,

and your heart

searching for sustenance in the low-tide

somewhere in-between.

Jayden Spillane

Jayden Spillane (they/them) Jay is a nurse, a birdwatcher, and occasionally an accordion player. They recently returned to poetry after a long hiatus, and approach writing as a mindfulness practice. They have learnt through writing that tuning in to the subtle movements and textures of the world around us can help to draw out the intangible shapes of our internal worlds, and offer words for experiences that can be hard to name.

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