1
Dear Mick,
the phone bone’s a blunt instrument
so I scrawl this
sea-sickness.
Having turned myself inside-out, things
are more difficult to hold:
I misjudge their location
trying to spear a fish
through bevelled jade waves.
We are away
at the lavender and lanes of Norfolk
beached close
to the pier Erin first learnt
to walk upon.
The slots seem closer now
a mere coin’s width
so Holly kneels
eye to the crack
confirms her distance from the shore.
The only cloud
lands on my Guinness
and slowly seeps into the colour of beach.
It’s a relief to reach the end of the land
safer than the end of the line
took me first away.
Mick, I never meant to lose touch
and here practice it;
hands and feet
frottage the daily collage.
2
This lunchtime
Guinness is what I think with
freshly poured storms
in perma-frosted plastic
minerals, micro-minnows
glint in its dark.
The throat is the strangest pocket.
Erin finds a pebble
blue-veined pink quartz:
she is giving me my knees
school playing field circa ’78
double games on brittle grass
(cooler than Eric Dolphy’s beard
circa ’59).
Mick, can I ask;
do you see skycrobes in bright light
mobile hair-line fractures in sight?
In the Ballad of the Mid-day Blind
soft tarmac mats
are star-maps, constellations
warm so the toes
have pleasing, squeezing, purchase.
Gabrielle finds a pincer
so smooth it can only be porcelain:
real ocean with imaginary crabs in it.
I have this pen
blue letters crest on white
sail; spiral spine
a mast. Gathering pen
what shall we catch, and when
shall we ken a politic art
of animal husbandry?
3
Lace-work at low-tide
brought back to the table of my knees
a week later.
This rests upon occasion
squeezed and interstitial, plains
speech; so it might join the mouth
tongue and groove.
Locked there
I walk its plank; place
piece by piece replaced.
A welcome mat
laid looney tune style.
4
the sky’s on backwards
spilt
in every puddle
invitation
to dive.
Copyright © Simon Perril, 2010.
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