I have flown
a wide open ocean
where waves break
and boil like crested
terns in a rookery
I have flown
a sweeping plain
where grasses sway
on the breeze like a school
of silver mackerel
I am a lone sandpiper
patrolling
an empty shoreline
perhaps a thousand miles
from any I know
wondering
can this bank of wind
swept sand keep me safe
from the memory
of your watery embrace
Gregory Piko was joint winner of the WB Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia. His poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies including Page Seventeen, Short and Twisted, The Best Australian Poems, theAustralian Poetry Anthology, Yeats 150 (Lilliput Press, Ire) and Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (WW Norton, USA). Gregory lives in Yass, New South Wales.