The Poetry Society

You may be out of your depth, but not out of the world.

This is where most of it is. In the blue sunshine,

in the green fogs of plant bits, the water winds

that ripple the sand here too, you're walking

 

still close to home. It's like the rockpool

of your dreams, where anemones

don't turn out to be weeds, crabs

 

can still move, and there are

fumbling galaxies

 

of five-armed stars.

 

*

 

So many animals leave themselves lying around.

A doormat-sized plaice covered in mud, its features

laid out on top, nearly trips you. A scallop

squirts away like a startled paperweight.

 

There's no waymarking. You move your feet

at your own risk. The sea urchins

and whelks were before you, slow

 

knobbly crawlers. You walk

on their sluggish land

 

with fish for birds.

 

*

 

If you could you'd be a herring, one among many,

making your home in movement, squeezed by everyone

you'd ever known, letting the world slip away

over your flanks, holding yourself in tight

 

to fire like a bullet through your life,

eating and breathing where you went,

knowing only silver and

 

not-silver, a terror

of dolphins, a wrenched

 

halt in the net.

 

*

 

You had got used to the unlikely swimming-pool blue

downwelling from the surface, how it made the fish

into shimmers of water, twisting away

and vanishing as you reached out your hand.

 

Now you've arrived in evening, where each

step takes you further from the light.

You have to look for it first

 

before you see with it.

You will reach night soon.

 

Blue stars drift past.