Mandy Coe
Sing
We watch the way men wade
making tiny waves with their thighs.
Then the decision is made and they dive.
We sit on the beach considering
the harmonics of sin.
Father fetches us ice-cream.
Father will not go in the water;
won’t even paddle.
When the rip-tide threatened
to spin us sisters out to sea,
he yelled for mother.
She sat, her familiar shape moulding
deck chair stripes into gentle blue waves.
With her back to us she sang us in.
Later, Father tried to hide his trembling hands
by scrubbing us down with a sandy towel.
We sit on sand and see men stumble,
we lick along the sides of the wafers.
Page(s) 17
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