Shark Crazy - A Poem by Patty Mooney

You and I hand-in-hand near Hervey Bay Marina,

aluminum masts jangling in the sweet salt air

when this guy closes in - stocky, sun-toasted, grizzle-

chinned, gets chatting about sharks. A Great White

chows on Aussies like Vegemite on toast.

That grey shadow moves like a battering ram to

shake loose a limb, wolf it back, gnash it down

to chum. In sea water blood seems black.

"Oz" is one big spot of land circled by Great

Whites, hammerheads, lemons, tigers, blues,

and they linger at Hervey. Vic pulls up

his T-shirt to show the mark of a shark whose jaw

caught the waist, a circle of gashes like Morse code.

"That son-of-a-bitch got away with the taste of my blood in him.

But I've killed plenty since to make up for it."

Vic's going hunting at dusk, got room for two.

I imagine leaning off the bow of his trawler,

like the one Robert Shaw manned in Jaws.

I think of the 20-foot White in formaldehyde

at the shark museum.

Vic points at a fourteen-foot skiff.

Your eyes catch mine.