StylusLit

March 2022

Back to Issue 11

Adagio

By Brenda Saunders

after Songs of Sea and Sky, Peter Sculthorpe, 1987.

 

 I see a curlew 

 in the whiteness

 of a false dawn

 

Her reedy call 

inches ahead                                              

skims calm bays  

sleeping islands

 

wakes an ocean 

inside me

 

Pitched high 

a piano slides

arpeggios  

over glassy waters

 

I hear notes drop

light as spray

on wings in flight 

 

a flurry of birds

dazzle 

calls up the sun

the sun in me