On a cracking swell, I

escaped the damp and broody confines of the inlet, motored past the paperbarks and the red cliffs ... to the sand bar and the southern ocean.

 anchored the dinghy into shifting sands and walked east

 communed with a whale

a plummeting gannet, a Pacific gull, the hot burst of a mandarin crescent in my mouth.

found treasure

black dog and me, we stopped to gaze into rockpools 

and then we walked on, over the limestone stumps of ancient forests,

following the fox's early morning prints
to Reef Beach.