Poems

When the water in the bay is flat, and clouds
                      come off the Table
           like chimney smoke, we walk along the shore
and up through fields of grasses, and find ourselves
                      near his place,
      so white it seems the stone is newly cut.
The breeze there drives the midges away
                      and the outer isles,
           dark bergs from the shore, become the map’s
archipelago. I’ve heard talk, at wakes and christenings,
                      of a nod and a wink,
           that someone knew someone on the town planning
subcommittee. These days we see strangers here,
                      German businessmen
           who want to try the island life, who smile and wave
at us. But mostly the windows are shuttered
                      and the washing line
           is free to glint and clink against its posts.
Last week, though, we caught a rare glimpse
                      on the path down
           to the beach. We spotted him in the distance,
his cagoule whipping in the wind, his bald head
                      flashing like a gull’s,
           and as we passed he paused, and turned
his hopeful face towards us, before someone said
                      something appropriate,
           that we might slide by as by doe-eyed cattle
at the water’s edge, that raise their heads,
                      but never seem to low.

Dark river of itself, curled in the bottom of the creel
the small myth was an absence, a light taker,
pulsing with malevolence, its oily body slick
with power and potential, head, tail, middle
a single unremitting story told to the end.

None would put his hand in, tempt the malicious eye
or risk springing the trap of its jaws. Even its name,
the mysterious double e, defied us, bled sound.
Neither fish nor animal, we knew elvers would cross
fields and roads to reach the sea. Could he be a god?

Three days they forgot about him in the bucket.
He baked in the sun, skin drying brown,
contemplating the distant blue of the sky,
until one took pity and brought him down to the sea
uncurled his body and with tender fingers

sluiced the water through his gills.
How it must have felt, the prisoner released
into the light, Houdini cheating the burning rope –
the thin triumphant smile, the vengeful gleam,
before he disappeared into the blackness of himself.

And let this be a lesson, frogmen,
to those who return too fast from a foreign element, the punishment
is terrible. Terrible for those like Icarus

who believe they’ve mastered the other place
with feathers glued to bamboo shoots, or prosthetic webbing.

Sojourners, be humble
as the earthworm is humble.

He embraces the earth, lets it pass through him, he burrows he eats
his element,
blind, deaf, mute. He knows the vengeance of birds, their iron beaks.
So when you rise in a cacophony of bubbles

through the ocean’s unmeasured mass,
come back slowly. Listen

to your breathing.
Think of the half-opened door of the moon, how it let slip
men into its bare pantry.

Of the tips of mountains and their time-lock on life,
and be thankful for yours.

Magma

My grief moves like the sea, it carries me with it.
My nose is full of animal smells; I breathe the same hot air
the animals breathe. I feel their heat.

Salt works its way in everywhere. It scours our skin,
it makes our hair brittle, our hands crack.
Lions bed down with cattle, the elephant no longer moves.

I still hear the screams of my neighbours, my friends.
Their fear overwhelms me, and my heart
holds the sounds of their drowning children.

May be salvation is in the sad eyes of the zebra.

The London Magazine

In answer to the Jewish question I answer ‘no’
though by my brow, my eyes, my nose you’d be forgiven
for thinking so;

for even in a room of Jews on Sabbath Friday, one asked
if I was one, and said of all the men there, I was the one
you wouldn’t ask.

I followed their rituals, took water like proper Jews
do, like my father’s mother’s father must have done, but
I watch the news

and see stone-throwers nightly face the tanks, and lies
and wonder who my lost people are who can only
see one side, eye

for an eye, ten deaths for a death. Who is counterfeit,
those who lose their lands, their histories, or the lessons
they beget?

Acumen Magazine