Mouth of the Margaret River
and I’m walking up the southern bank 
to where it starts to curve and bend.

There’s someone fishing 
from the shore,
so I head back and sit on the grass
by the water’s edge.

There are a lot of fish in there—
in the brown water
amongst the grass 
near the bank;
I probably would have thought bream,
but they look more like mullet.
Whatever they are, they’re not
heading out the river’s
closed mouth until winter’s rains
push it open again,
if that’s where they’ll go.

I look over to all the fan flowers
on the northern side, closer to the ocean.
The wind brings the shouts of kids
up from the sea.

The fisherman walks past behind me and 
throws a line in a little further downriver.
I choose not to betray the fish at my feet
to him—but he can probably see them
anyway.

I walk up to where he was originally fishing
and look upriver. The wide wings and light
and dark of an osprey flying upriver, low 
on the northern side above the paperbarks.
I hear the sound of another one, high and 
shrill somewhere out of view.
There are more fish in the shallows here.

I can feel the power and presence
of the place a little further upriver.
I never go there,
but I feel it reaches out to me—
flows down on the bed
of river, flooding in.

I observe it from the place I make for it—
global reaches.
There is a conversation.

It ends with something like:
“Be responsible
for these deeper layers
in all the work
of the world,
human being.”