Galle, Sri Lanka
The here is where
we wash up soon enough,
a pendant off India’s green ear.
At watery dusk
fifty crows
like black tar beads
stretched
across the lines below,
a storm coming in over
the Laccadive Sea.
Your sarong unravels in
slow saffron threads
that catch on a rattan chair.
A lighthouse beam
sweeping the colonial roofs
in dark trade with night.
And I am losing
the weave of you,
the warp and weft,
shuttle-flank, hip and thigh.
Thunder
rumbles and barks
across the bay,
a luminous gecko keeping
company on the balcony.
The slap-slap of sandals,
purposeful
in the darkness below.
Rain.
Quickening
Brian Flaherty is co-founder of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre with Michele Leggott, and was co-editor of the poetry journal Trout. Poems have appeared in Turbine, Best NZ Poems, Blackmail Press, Ika, and Ka Mate Ka Ora. Plague Poems was published by Little Island Press in 2021. Recordings of some of his poetry are at Six Pack Sound.
