Reckon I can hear the mud crabs getting ready to crawl in our pots from here
He laughs at his own joke, but she’s busy pulling away,
yanking the frayed grey cord of her childhood
15hp Yamaha outboard, lurching them from boat ramp
downstream into a shower of mangrove leaves
and a sudden waft of two-stroke.
Her dad rolls a smoke, Champion
Ruby. His leatherback shoulders, squaring up to offer
prime advice (as if choking would help
an engine that’s been crapped out most of her life).
You probably flooded it
The daughter tunes out his questions, hears
clicking crepitations of pistol shrimp and oysters.
She spits answers through gritted teeth,
words landing somewhere near his stinking Volleys,
jamming like a filleting knife in the muddy ribs
of the tinny.
Their abrupt seat change sends her slideways
into the wake of her youth; blue frictionless mornings
skimming along
under an unsparing sun. Hot, salt-crusted
bum perched on silver bulkhead,
flicking fish scales off pinkening knees, squinting
clouds into crabs, loosening loss into breeze.
Sharpening her freckled, five-year-old forehead
against the wind, sure,
her father knows the way.
She’ll be around here somewhere. His leatherback bent
over oarlocks squeaking, they slide across scum bubbles
blown by the tide. The nose into estuaries and upsent branches,
her ankles get bitten to shit by sandies, she shuffles
at thoughts of a full bladder, a Cottee’s cordial bottle filled
with warm water, rolls back and forth between their feet.
Then, they duck a branch, scrape the hull across
an underwater forest, find the bobbing moonface
of a Styrofoam float submerged at king tide,
just out of reach, a child’s elbow deep in milky-green.
You’re up
She’s got it,
straddles the seat,
hand over hand, slick with slime
she tilts the boat toward the bearded blue telco rope.
Pools of leaf-littered bilge water slosh round the boat
as they list. Suddenly, suction releases the crab pot
and a burp of mullet guts sends the kid reeling.
It’s just a Jenny
Her mother’s name was Jenny.
With tender, sunspotted hands
the father’s broad, blunt nails find a purchase
behind large claws. He holds her gentle
as breath. Doubled over, repeated
on water’s surface, they watch her
swim away.
Righto, bait her up
The daughter dreads it. Even now, almost 40,
the flatulence of a too-warm carcass.
Having to fillet the heaviness
of these little, empty hours
just to set the pots again.
By noon it’s all midgies and thirst.
Let’s just call it a day
like any other. Nothing’s changed,
the old engine bites, sputters.
They putter against the wind for years.
Two small silhouettes and an oil slick of fuel
Two birds trying to find each other
trailing behind.
It’s an unspoken rule
if the pots come up empty,
they won’t talk about it.
Kim Kenyon grew up in a treehouse on a little island off the coast of Queensland and has checked a lot of empty crab pots over the years. After a few decades as a sailor, youth worker and adventure guide she now lives on Jinibara Country with her partner and two little children.
Recently, she was awarded first and second place in the Kyogle Readers & Writers Poetry Competition and was a finalist in the Joe Lynch Memorial Cup. In 2025, Kim was commended for the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize, Highly Commended for the Liquid Amber Poetry prize, competed in the QLD finals for the Australian Poetry Slam and was awarded a Faber Poetry scholarship.