Pre-dated

After the poor boy is taken in shallows
Another pack of sharks
Sniffs out crimson billows.

Even here, on the gulf’s other side
A school of choppers
Arrives for frenzied interviews and shots
Of the victim’s school

Politicians join the feeding maelstrom
Demands on talkback
For the creature to be shot

Only the boys parents won’t play the bloodlust game
It’s the last thing he would have wanted

But they are dismissed as
Too close to comment

The gulf widens.

Predators move in.

© rob walker, 2006


I was having a fishing holiday at our shack on Yorke Peninsula across the Gulf from Adelaide when I was buzzed by a chopper. I found out on the TV news that night that a local boy had been taken by a shark and the helicopter contained photographers & journos looking for shots of sharks, treacherous seas and the boy’s school. I couldn’t get the idea of predators out of my head – the media even moreso than the shark.

This poem appeared in my chapbook phobiaphobia – poems of fear and anxiety (Picaro Press, Australia, 2006.)