(after Philip Gross)

              and on the appointed day, 
or thereabouts, everyone drives off to find it
going bumper to bumper audiobooks at a standstill 
till they hit the the bridge at the Bay
where summer officially begins.

Reversing vans onto powered sites
families arrive at crazy angles, lean-tos
bottom hand down, unrolling tarps
unfolding tables and what are you wearing? 
barely shorts, palm prints and heavily logoed tees

rising over swollen bellies. 
Staggered by the embrace of eucalypt and diesel,
you’re pulling cones in a juice bottle bong 
and holding in that sweet herbal 
until the contours of the day

swirl with laughter so you finally put aside
the self that was half the body’s winter.
Cicadas so loud you have to SHOUT 'I've arrived'
thongs for the blaze of sand or go barefoot fuckit 
where every shadowed path is alive with blacksnakes

and the water is revelatory—a turquoise roaring 
familiar as a Cronulla childhood
until the flash rip takes the legs
out from under you, and you’re up to your neck
in it. 

---

Image: c/- State Library of NSW on Flickr. A summer holiday poem after Philip Gross’ Big Snow.

Notes: ‘the Bay’ refers to Batemans Bay on the NSW South Coast; a juice bottle bong is a makeshift water pipe for smoking marijuana – comprised of some aluminium foil, a section of garden hose and a plastic orange juice bottle; thongs in this context are a rubber soles held to the foot by two straps that meet between the first and second toes; Cronulla is a seaside suburb of Sydney; a flash rip is caused by the unexpected collapse of a sand bar.

And for music this morning here’s London-based jazz ensemble seed with their 2021 album balletboyz (Youtubers try this)