The Sunbaker

Dupain's sunbaker, baked in white-hot light,
can't move now.
Heat has pinned him to the sand —
immaculate specimen of
Australian identity,
fixed in gelatin silver
to hang on a hundred walls.

But if he rose, sweaty-sandy,
to cup his eyes from the white light,
squint across glaring sand
to the diamond-dazzle sea,
make his heavy way,
through slack-jawed heat a-shimmer,
feet-squeaking, to the black lava flow,
and there, on the burning rock,
poised and insubstantial,
the water white fire before him,
make a silver dive, quick and elegant —
he'd find another world.

Thrusting now, twisting and rolling,
schools of shadows gather him
to the depths. His hands flutter
close at his sides propelling him further
from the hard light of the dry world.
Sirens sing sibilants, mermaids groom
his floating hair as fingerlings
play hide-and-seek with the coral comb
and the silkie promises to catch
the moon for him in her seaweed net.

Max's bather, simple in the sun,
sing with sibyls in your dreams.
Nationhood has just begun
and nothing's as simple as it seems.