Poem: The Moon Balancing

The Moon Balancing

Yours the figure on the dune

Against shimmering angles of water

The runner on wet sand

Footprints stabbing

A clean and glassy surface

Yours the dog matching the pace

Plunging amidst the foaming surge

Along the curving shore

Yours the body climbing

The steep path through scrub

Ferns brushing ankles

Birds calling from banksias

A last interruption

To the soft descent

Of darkness

Yours is the woman

Watching, waiting

At the window

Sees the moon balancing

On a single tree top

Yours the arms full of driftwood

The hands that will light the fire.

Leila Helen Meredith is a retired newspaper journalist living in a hill-forest region of south-eastern Queensland. She worked for 40 years as both a journalist and editor on major national Australian newspapers, and online news services. An Old Scholar of Brisbane’s historic St. Margaret’s Anglican Girls’ School, she has always written poetry and short stories, but only in more recent times, ‘found the time to give them an airing’.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor. 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Brandon Morgan