Beyond the coach, the open reaches of the Thames summons
ravens, gulls, otters, and the Sussex docked at Gravesend.

Mothers fiddle with their baskets and bonnets, children herd
cattle and goats, undaunted by din, the rank, soggy earth.

Autumn with her rich unleaving of oak, elm and maple
measures my bleakness. For days the wind has refused to speak.

My youngest, Plorn, waits in a boarding house with his dog,
his armoury of rifles, revolvers, saddles and family portraits

which will decorate the saloon. But when the fiddler plays a shanty,
when the sails are unfurled, the anchor raised out of mud

that other world begins with its nautical discipline. So remote
from landfall or the idleness of London, strange things can happen.

My advice is to write furiously in the evenings as Wilkins Micawber
— while shooting seagulls you may become your own fiction.

I'm fascinated by the arc of falling stars, eclipses, the way words
permit the undertow of shipwreck, gambling, child mortality.

I grieve for this farewell, to which my self is tethered, as letters
tied to pieces of coal are flung aboard a home-bound craft;

the voyage south to Melbourne both searing and cold. How still
the ocean is, a perfect fleet of ships, the distance quite imaginary.