Some of the limestone has fallen at the south 
end of the beach, so it’s hard
to walk around the corner,
even at low tide. 
The welcome swallows are still there.

The water pours around the corner from the 
Southern Ocean, pushing up
into the Indian.

People wait by the jetty to see the 
small triangular and large rounded
stingrays. The rays cruise past
lazily in the shallows, their wings
rippling under the water.

People put in and pull out boats and dinghies 
at the ramp. The rays dodge trailers and boats
and hands and feet.

I take a swim a little further north. There’s
seaweed and limestone cloudiness
in the water. Someone points
to some dolphins 
about a hundred metres out.
I take in the warming sun 
after a cool night, and look out
at the old jetty stumps sticking out of the water,
and the island just off the mainland.

What is this place?
What is it really?
How can we ever know?
What am I doing here?
And the answer comes almost immediately,
even before I think I’ve formulated 
the mood of the question.

To help. To serve. To make better. 
And care. Surely this is 
the only reason for being anywhere.
Surely this is the only
task there really is.
Surely this is the only way anything 
will reveal itself truly.

Places transformed, transfigured
by the seeing—
by the seeing in thought—
by the ‘I’;
so that the I receives the
place as it pours in, 
the seeing process reversed;
then rays the essence 
of the seen places back out upon
the world again,
recreated,
as if the Earth 
can pass through the eye
of the I—
coming out a Sun.