Early Sunrise Over Brush Island Poem by David McLean Mathews

As if one 5: 30am swim
Wasn’t mad enough
Let’s do it twice
In three days
The golden syrup
Glow
Spreading like
Stars across

The island
Visited yesterday
By men
In a nondescript
Tinny
Their tales
Lost in the nor
Easter

The single light
Swinging its
Hello
Where Cook
First set eyes
On black skin
Puzzled
Wondering
If it were clothes
Instead

Little Penguins and shearwaters
Petrels and oystercatchers
The rats long gone
After 70 years
Of joyous abandon
The quiet now
Just rolls in
Like the sets
Fluming on the point

(Bawley Point,18 January 2013)