Out of the Blue (19 page)

She’s next to nowhere, feeling no cold

in her white sluther of bubbles.

She comes to a point like a seal

in his deep dive, she is sleek.

As her nostrils close

she’s at home. See how salt water slides

as she opens her eyes.

There is the word
naked

but she’s not spelled by it.

Look at her skin’s steel glint

and the knife of her fins.

With the basking shark

with the minke whale

and the grey seal

she comes up to breathe

ten miles offshore.

I never stop listening to you sing

long enough to know what I think.

All I do is let it go on.

The bubble of song bounces towards me

over the wet surfaces of the kitchen

and you with your arms folded

in that tiny immemorial way you’ve observed,

your soft, small arms folded

over your chest where your breath

flows and unflows easily,

don’t need to look at me.

The bubble of your song bounces towards me

its surface tension strong

as it shudders, recovers.

You let the song go where it wants.

When you’ve fallen asleep, or I think you’ve fallen

I withdraw, still singing

or perhaps still listening to you sing,

but you feel me going. Why am I going

always going, instead of listening to you sing?

Your hand knows better than mine

and with authority

of touch I cannot match

wraps me round you again.

Viking cat in the dark

is paw-licked velvet, sinew of shadow,

a thread of smoke bitterly burning,

a quiver of black like a riddle.

The huts lie low

a hoard half-hidden

a clutch of eggs

in the dune’s hollow

and horned helmets

are nightmares to wake from

shapes cut from dreams

– but the cat leaps.

Like rain falling faster

the shadows whisper

and rain spatters

like death’s downpour:

‘
Fight for me, dawn-slayer,

wake with me, sleep-sower,

keeper of dreams,

the dream we came for
.’

There is no noise.

Only the quick

paws of the cat in the dark

like feet on the stairs,

but the cold grey hands of the sea clap

on the beached long-ships,

and a shape pours itself flat

to the chink of sword music.

Viking cat in the dark

is paw-licked velvet, sinew of shadow.

A thread of smoke, bitterly burning

quivers her body like a riddle.

’s

not like any other

day sleep     night sleep

long drive sleep

too cold     too hot sleep

What’s that window doing shut?
     sleep

get a bit of peace sleep

hungry     thirsty

need to pee

sleep,

baby sleep’s

all over the shop sleep

new nappy and babygro poppers

done up to the neck sleep

fat fingers

starfishing

damp feathers

on neck curling

baby lotion and talc sleep

sleep in Mum and Dad’s bed sleep

cry in sleep and then sleep sleep

sleep while the big peop

le wash and dress sleep

baby sleep

When you grow tired of the flame

wumping to life in the central heating boiler,

and the duvet sweats like obstinate flesh

in the middle of winter,

don’t finger the lightswitch. Leave the coil

of electricity sleeping. Go down

tread after tread by the draught

of heat coming upward. The voice

of the house is warning.
Get out

it breathes,
Leave us alone

to our shuffling of dust-mites, our sorting

of smell and shadow into home
.

First the bolt, then the chain, then the Chubb.

You’re outside, but even in a nightdress

that comes to the thighs, you can’t rub the warmth off.

With his hands he teaches wind to move –

not this shuffle of leaves

from rows of pollarded trees

but the salt-laden, incoming

breath of the Indies.

He’s six foot seven,

liquid in dull grey track suit,

his trainers undone.

There’s a small keen boy

at his heels, yapping

for ball-time, air-time.

It’s playtime in the gardens

with children sagely going round

on patient horses they strike with small

privileged hands.

Behind him, gravelly sand,

a guitarist picking

the bones of a tune

mournful as Sunday,

the empty horses

of carousels turning.

Tell the basketball player how tight

time is, how he’s reached perfection

at the same time as the man with his rake

puts the gravel straight on something.

Tell him this is the moment

the arrow of his life flew out of

to return into his breastbone.

Or say nothing.

Refrigerator days.

Ours is the size of a walk-in larder,

casing everything.

One word

which has gone out of fashion

is
putrefaction
.

When Simmonds fell from his tiger lookout

it was not the growl

nor the stripes

that said
tiger
.

It was the tiger’s breath.

All that old, bad meat

furring its teeth.

For a moment Simmonds was critical,

sniffing the exhalation of corpses,

the walk-in larder where he was going.

Two spines curve in

as the sisters face on a gate

in their matching cardigans.

They are looking into something –

a stolen Swan Vesta box

plump with green privet,

and there’s one match left

with which to poke it –

their marvellous possession.

Inner thighs chafe on a crust of lichen.

Riding the gate is the best game

these two have ever come on.

The more bloody a ballad

they more they love it. Cigars,

betrayal, the flames of hell

and the slaughter of innocence

are what speaks, makes the gate creak.

Girls, give us a song

in your tidy cardigans. Your hair’s

deceptively sleek, you are

tangled, complicit, in on it.

Hungry Thames, I walk over the bridge

half-scared you’ll whittle me down

where the brown water is eager

and tipped with foam.

You sigh and suck. You lick at the steps

you would like to come up.

Hungry Thames, we feed you on concrete,

orange-peel, polystyrene cups,

we hold our kids by a handful of clothing

to let them look at your dimples,

your smiling waters. We should hold them tighter,

these are whirlpools, this is hunger

lashing its tail in the mud, deep down

where the river gets what it wants.

Now winter comes and I am half-asleep

crawling the hollow of an apple, my sound

a battery toy in a child’s cupped hand,

or I climb to a ledge and lie, dulled

by its half-warmth. Half-wasp, I’m still

helpless not to sting your exploring finger

helpless in the pulse of my body.

The paddle of your hand churns

as you find something to kill me.

I keep on stinging. I cannot learn

through my crispness, the coat of warning

that says what I am.

The man who gave little Ellie his forever

love was a timeshare salesman.

He let her look round the place

when the carpet was freshly steam-cleaned

and the teabag box was full to the brim,

but he left little Ellie for an instant

and she spied the used teabag jam-jar

sodden and rusty as iron.

Oh Ellie
, whispered little Ellie,

there have been many here before you.

But she was smiling at the door

when he gave her his hand, wet from the ballcock

he’d quickly fixed in the cistern.

In a serenade of gurgles and yawns

the plumbing talked itself down

and perfect Ellie was his dream.

How could he replace or kill her

with her genius for noticing nothing

but the nice day, the short walk to the pool

the view of the beach from the bathroom window?

Sweet Ellie never crossed the time-share salesman,

but tended her one week like a garden.

She did not keep a diary where the others

might be noted or brooded over.

Kindly she watches him run on the wheel

of his weeks till he gets back to nineteen

where she is always happy to wait for him.

Dusty geraniums come back to life

in the days where Ellie waters them,

and the time-share salesman slackens his smiles

at the sight of Ellie’s daring paëlla:

in week nineteen she is his forever.

All the squares of trampoline are taken

by children leaping like chessmen

who won’t play the game. Up, flying.

from tiny freeholds, hitting the sky’s

elastic surprise, then down.

There’s a space for you always.

Two kids eating ice-cream

with careful darts of the tongue

watch as you start to climb

the icy November sky, hand over hand.

You hear the clap of the sea

and your bright blue trampoline applauding

with the dull fervour of rubber

each time you go down,

and the kids eating ice-cream

with wind in their teeth say nothing

as the time mounts and your turn

grows impossibly long.

On the white path at noon when the sun

burns through olive and eucalyptus

and the pale stones rattle

as if someone’s walking,

when the goat jumps and the sea shivers

like a dog turning its belly upward

to a hand that teases it,

and the sky is cloudless but suddenly

dark drops spatter the dust

and there, where no one is walking,

a line of wet footprints.

Crickets crackle in the dry maquis,

their sound unbroken.

No one is walking.

If you touch your finger to the dust, quickly,

you’ll catch the pressure just gone.

Small, silvery, slipping

from finger to finger,

beads for street corners,

beads for white noon

when shadows curl by the walls

and the dog in the square lolls

with his tongue unfurled,

beads for navy-blue evenings

when the smell of oranges

drifts to the fountain,

beads for waiting on the landing-stage,

for the heat that shimmers

from village to village,

for the boy guarding the goats

and the old woman hoeing in black,

beads for leaving to find work

and for the dream of coming back,

beads for remembering

and for forgetting,

wrapped round the wrists of babies

and the dying,

beads for the life we live in,

small, silvery, slipping

from finger to finger.

Music plays gently. Yesterday's morning paper

flutters at the end of its long emigration

from being news. This is the present,

but when? Coconut cake, a stained napkin,

a tea-glass bisected by long spoon.

Any minute now it's going to rain.

What kind of animal is the past?

A wooden screen makes two rooms of one.

On the other side, where I saw her last,

my baby girl. I'll wipe her nose with the napkin,

take her to the Ladies and change her,

blow the bubble of words towards her

that says,
This is the present, there is no other
.