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The Sea
One night the tide went out
and never came back in -
its shoals
of moonlight lost
beyond our horizon.
We woke to a desert
a salt-crusted silence.
For weeks the
churches were full.
Then they were empty.
The sea became a myth
our thin children don't believe in.
They
mock our obsolete knowledge
of trade winds and currents.
They turn their backs on the docks
where the boats are all
sinking
white masts leaning at angles
like a forest of dying
birches.
We grow long-sighted,
watching for sails
in the shimmering
heat.
We fall asleep
listening to shells.
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Fifth of November
I draw the curtains, turn the TV up.
The dog's already cringing,
despite a shot
to calm her down. She trembles
like the fringing on a lampshade
as a distant earthquake
starts.
Hair-trigger hearing; she barks
as the postman changes gear
a mile from home, cocks her head
at
the silence before the phone rings.
She senses storms hours in advance,
cowering as the wind roars and
flattens
fields of corn in the distant Borders.
Now her ears, fine-tuned into the dark,
are flickering, picking up
the spurt
of each struck match, the sizzle of fuses.
She creeps into my lap, her tremor
thrilling through my ribs. I
croon
It's alright, but she's deaf
to comforting. Her eyes slide sideways
showing their whites. I see
clouds
scarfing the moon like gun smoke
a crowd of pale faces lifted to the sky,
children covering their
ears
ready to scream.
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The Ring Man
They say he could sense gold
hidden in the sand - an ache
at the
root of his tongue
told his hands where to dig.
They say a fortune of rings
bit deep into his sea-stained
skin,
that his thick knuckles were dusted
with the sparkle of lost
stones.
My mother swears she never saw him
without his hands thrust in his
pockets,
but I've heard the women of the town
smuggled their hearts
down to the harbour
where they whispered to dark sailors
and their naked fingers
danced.
And there's a rumour he was buried
with his wrist stumps
dipped in tar,
that our fathers wrecked themselves
on the look-out for
likenesses
in the faces of their sleeping sons.
Now in certain
lights
stealing glimpses of myself
I see a stranger in my
eyes'
horizons, a Russian tsarina
in the slant of my cheekbones.
But a question could change forever
the weather in a home,
lives
bruising into storm.
We are all wedded to silence.
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Bubbly
I want to go to your head tonight,
shake you up like a grand prix
winner,
rocket to the ditzy stars,
set the moon's
mirror ball spinning,
lead you on a merry dance.
I want to fizz
right past your brim
and keep on fizzing.
I want to get the wolf in
you to whistle,
the world to wobble
God to get the giggles.
Tonight I'm Marilyn
lying in this bath
of creamy magnolia.
I'm
just dreamy,
blowing frothy kisses,
flirting in my foam
bikini.
Can't you see
I want you in a lather?
Darling I'm your
upper.
Pop me.
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Neighbours
I request the pleasure of your company.
No need to RSVP
just kick
down the front door
splinter the safety chain.
Call me by my formal name. Ms.
You'll find milk clotting in the
fridge.
Apples shrivelling in the bowl.
Help yourselves.
I'm the lady in waiting
screened behind the shower curtain
snug
as a heart
in a white enamel basin.
I've been listening to you
this past week -
the
throb of bass through the floor
the thump of next door's headboard
the rasp of awkward keys
the thwack of a perfect backhand
across
a face.
I tell the time in theme tunes.
I'm ready to receive you now
my hair spread out like weed
in the
dark red water.
Be my guests.
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Waltz of the Night Guard
A skyscraper sails
the city's slick of night
like a ghost ocean liner.
He is its captain
from the green-lit basement humming
like an abandoned engine room
to the rooftop in the stars
down through the
gleaming lift shaft's
fifty empty floors.
He shuffles deserted offices
shackled with keys. Families
smile at him from noticeboards
a message glides across a screen
Back soon . . . Back soon . . .
In the silent entrance hall
his footsteps echo marble,
a polished mahogany desk
curves like a ship's bar,
lilies still as moonlight
rest against the lip
of a tall glass vase
like girls waiting to be asked.
He shuts his eyes,
and risking a whistle in the dark,
slips his arm
around a waist of air.
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Out Of Season
This is all we could afford -
a one-star room
with a dribbling
shower,
grey towels,
a thin tablet of soap.
You scrape a chair
across the mock-marble floor.
I hang my flimsy
dresses
from thin wire shoulders.
The empty suitcase sags.
At breakfast, we stick to hard facts -
the average rainfall in
January,
the local flora and fauna.
The table's littered
with
shattered bread rolls.
Outside, the wind piles clouds
like dirty underwear.
We pose
alone in front
of scaffolded monuments
for photos we won't
develop.
Days spent in silent museums
learning the island's bloody
past.
Bored waiters serve us dinners
of tough, char-grilled
steaks.
We leave cold smiles
of fat on our plates.
The night air pimples
my bare arms. Cabs
with plastic
dashboard Madonnas
keep bringing us back
to this bed with its hard
bolster pillow, its sheets
of old
paperback yellow,
the crawling caterpillars
of green candlewick.
Lips sealed, we slip
into its tight envelope.
The crab of your
hand
inches towards me, shrinking
my nipple to a hard knot.
Sex judders through us
like rubber wiper blades across dry
glass.
We cling to the edges in the dark
listening
to the slow hand-clap
of a shutter in the wind.
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The Legend of Apollo
They wished for the moon
then granted it themselves
appearing in
its silence
like clumsy angels
dressed in white
with halos of
vapour.
They learnt to walk again
through the dream dust
of long dead
seas
to gaze like children
at their blue-glass sphere
tissued in
mist.
They returned home as gods
with a cargo of rocks
leaving only
relics
of their miracle -
a flag of
stars
footprints that have lasted
an eternity
and this photograph,
its bleed of colour
in the
night's negative -
a nuclear family
smiling at the dark.
Note: Charles
Duke, one of the Apollo astronauts, left a snapshot of his family on the
moon
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Sand
That last spring I seemed to guess.
In one long dusk I harvested the
garden,
hung clusters of flowers from the rafters.
I pressed violets
between the leaves
of dictionaries and bibles, filled
whole seed
trays with keep-sake petals.
The summer burned hotter, turning
the hydrangea heads
coppery,
rosebuds into bunches of dried blood.
Their dusty pot
pourri still lingers.
I fall asleep, my fingers tracing
the
wallpaper's trellis of honeysuckle.
I am the last one left in this valley,
empty and brown as a beggar
bowl.
All day I sweep the desert from my steps.
The slate floors
crunch like emery boards.
Wood loses its lustre, dulls to the
matt
of a cataract eye. My skin cracks like a lizard's.
I turn on taps out of habit.
The plumbing is racked by shuddering
sobs.
I risk bad luck - umbrellas blooming indoors
like black silk
poppies. I've spent hours
sifting the attic for grass-stained tennis
balls
shutting my eyes, inhaling the past.
No twilight. Night falls like a blade.
In my dry bed, I dream
rain;
fat droplets on waxy laurel leaves
clouds the colour of
tear-run ink,
the subtleties of mist. I dive into a pool
and wake.
The dunes curve their scimitars.
Silence - except for the tinnitus
inside my head,
its constant shush and whisper.
The horizon shifts in the
moonlight,
a drift surges, snapping a telegraph pole
like a pencil,
a forest of pines
shrinking to Christmas trees.
I think of the pale green domes of cathedrals
buried out there like
unhatched eggs.
Soon this house will go blind, its windows
silted
the sun eclipsed, an hour glass twist
in the fireplace. I
already sense its silkiness,
the kiss that will stopper my mouth.
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