Look Where the Lake's Gone.(Poem)

 
LOOK WHERE THE LAKE'S GONE 
 
   Look where the Lake's gone-- 
   round Marks Point and out to sea 
   through dimpled green hollows. 
   It's left flats of crumpling cocoa 
   where creatures of the Shallow 
   get on with the afternoon's work, 
   making patterns, plucking, 
   sucking, scribbling with runcible claws. 
 
   The two redheads, alone in the mud, 
   have forgotten the gilding machine 
   so full of heat and mischief, above them, 
   and their mother has a book somewhere, 
   so, in an hour or two, are totally sunburnt, 
   not a bit of them unburnt. 
 
      Vinegar, blisters, peeling skin, 
   new freckles like tiny brown stars, 
   a week inside reading the only comic-- 
   now, with shirts, hats, 
   zinc, threats, 
   they can make Marks Point theirs. 
   The tiny gunbarrel houses, cooped up 
   together round the bay, are full 
   of bad old beds that smell of oil, 
 
   and have verandahs for looking at the lake 
   and losing crabs on. These creatures, 
   so small you can fill an old peach tin  ...