Augury: sea surface temperature charts – by Georgina Woods
WINNER OF THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2025
One line ravels from the record.
Many-ply plotted years bend
delicate as grass fronds, fold
more or less together.
The last years lie rosy loose
as new growth over coiled stalks
of before, but this year veers errant
up the axis into disarray.
An upward rush of birds,
no matter in their flight.
The wayward lines I would comb down.
Reach out to stroke off-kilter data,
and preen them back to order—or else fly
headlong likewise high beyond
the range of observation.
Break machines, tug the mean,
loose the cloth of precedence that binds
us more or less together.
The auspices are turbulent.
Many thousand penguin chicks
are drowned. Gannets range wide
as pilchards ply deep water.
All the flyways scatter.
Let it break, then.
Authority is soft ice
crumbling.
Skew, then, birds. Squall
out of formation.
Sheer off, anomalies,
high bright like bolt lightning:
make our lives lucent in this hazard.
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Image: Shaun Meintjes/Unsplash
This poem appeared in Island 173 in 2025. Order a print issue here and see the poem as the author intended.
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