Winner of the 2025 Fisher’s Ghost Aboriginal Art Award

In the stillness of the morning tide,
A net cast far, a wish inside.
The water whispers secrets, deep,
A promise made, a vow to keep.

Yet fish, like hearts, slip through the net,
Elusive, lost, in waves of things not said.
The reel pulls back, a silent fight,
But all that’s caught is empty light.

Like love that fades, or dreams undone,
The silence speaks of what’s been spun.
Abandonment, a shadow’s face,
It haunts the heart, leaves no trace.

The fisherman, though quiet, knows
The pull of loss, the ebb, the flows.
For in each cast, in every throw,
A part of him too lets go.

To fish is to seek what can’t be kept,
To long for something, yet not regret.
Like abandonment’s tender sting,
It teaches, too, what silence brings.

-Miranda Hampson, 2025