Murray Dreaming

It’s not the sharks

Sliding mere inches from his upturned face

Through warps of water where the tunnel arcs

Transparent overhead,

Their lipless jaws clamped shut, extruding teeth,

Their eyes that stare at nothing, like the dead,

Staring at him; it’s not the eerie grace

Of rays he stood beneath,

Gaping at their entranced slow-motion chase

That is unending;

It’s not the ultra-auditory hum

Of ET cuttlefish superintending

The iridescent craft   

Of their lit selves, as messages were sent,

Turning the sight of him they photographed

To code: it is not this that left him dumb

With schoolboy wonderment

Those hours he wandered the aquarium.

It is that room,

That room of Murray River they had walled

In glass and, deep within the shifting gloom

And subtle drifts of sky

That filtered down, it seemed, from the real day

Of trees and bird light many fathoms high,

The giant Murray cod that was installed

In stillness to delay

All that would pass. The boy stood there enthralled.

Out in the day

Again, he saw the famous streets expound

Their theories about speed, the cars obey,

Racing to catch the sun,

The loud fast-forward crowds, and thought it odd

That in the multitudes not everyone

Should understand as he did the profound

Profession of the cod,

That held time, motionless, unknown to sound.

In bed at night,

Are his eyes open or is this a dream?

The room is all dark water, ghosted light,

And midway to the ceiling

The great fish with its working fins and gills

Suspended, while before it glide the reeling

And see-through scenes of day, faintly agleam,

Until their passage stills

And merges with the deep unmoving stream.