Bar Beach, late summer
waist deep in surf
I’m immersed in the colour
I don’t want to name
the apex, sea and sky
every shade, every stroke
my skin prickles with
the beauty of it.

Who named that
other feeling
assigning a colour
to gravelly laments
wailing saxophones
the thump of piano
giving voice to pain?
No!

Here
waist deep in surf
here is a different music
a pure ecstatic sky
a layer cake of sea
iced with foam

I want to lick it
this colour
inside me
is too expansive
so I nickname it
Heaven.

Anna Forsyth

 

Anna Forsyth is a writer and editor from New Zealand, currently travelling around Australia as an itinerant event producer. In 2014, she founded the feminist poetry organisation, Girls on Key, providing opportunities for women and non-gender binary poets.

© 2018