Different Air
(written after leaving Plymouth and moving to Mildura)
by Tris Kerslake
The Cornish breathe Atlantic storms like perfume rising from a scented breast and chase, brine-blasted eyes alight, the hoyden westerlies with lovers’ smiles.
The dusted incense of a Mallee mile that rinsed my throat in burning waves of strangely fragrant promises, now leaves me weak, desiring.
Hard-mouthed, the north men quest and conquer howling swells with arms beloved by women. Before the gale they roar their rougher battle hymns.
Priceless silt of crumbled cinnamon my touch excites your burnished sand displacing arid backwashed reefs, red-wrapped in flimsy spice, I drown.
Their faces rising to the kiss of spray with shouts exultant watch the Cornish hunt, crack muscle to the urge of water’s whip, impassioned, dance upon a twisting sea.
Horizon-locked and lost; seduced, confused by vagrant memories of a different air the breath inside drifts out, ebbs back, a stream of living sea runs to the mouth.
Caressed by winds as dry as death with elements of foreign composition, and though completely absent from my shore, I have felt the tide and tasted salt.