Poetry

The first time she sees him he's waist deep
in the milky water of the Blue Lagoon,
his broad chest, tattoos on show. She tastes the smell
of sulphur, feels a lover's caress of mud
on her soles. Confident as a trebuchet, his body
is the curtain walls of a castle and, as he talks
of poaching fish in the Pacific, she pictures
an old-fashioned pirate ship; stands close, hoping
for grappling irons to pull her in.

The second time she sees him he's in bouncer stance,
eyes everywhere like lights from watchtowers
swinging across the crowds.
He feels trouble buzzing like electricity
through a chain link fence, sees three moves ahead
but behind him - the priests,
some dead, all haunting, their hard voices,
soft hands. The walls are mined
and it's only a matter of time before they blow.

His blue shirt printed with charcoal swans
and his slow step, hands across his chest,
late because he refused the black fist
of the tube – the fear the train would stop on
an invisible platform and in the dark
smelling of electrics and cold he would linger,
wait and wait for the saving spark
and never again rise into the light.

We visited an exhibition of beds made of lead
In the centres little pools of liquid shivered
like fragile bodies leaking.
On hard pillows a spray of herbs wilted.
Against the grey monumental beds like stone
the blue of his shirt gleamed; his bright hair shone.

Remember how it used to be.

You’d load a camera. Take pictures.
Rush to the darkroom. Feel
into the lightproof womb,
slide the film into the developer,
stop solution, wash, hang to dry
till it was ready for the light.
Those tiny squares of images
black as white, white as black.

You never printed them.

I spent thirty years in the dark
trying to understand
until the scar of your back
faded into the dense evening.

I gave him a lift
in the ex-police car, water
dripping down my neck
from the hole in the roof
where the blue light used to be.

He was in the International
Marxist Group. We had
vigorous discussions
about the Revolution, how
Women Hold up Half the Sky.

One night staying drunk
at a tutor’s house
I hauled his clothes off
and pulled him into me.
The last time we spoke

the radiator boiled over.
I sold the car for fifty quid
to someone who thought
he could fix it, but I knew better.
The cylinder head was cracked.

You are in the garden.
You ask him to take
the other end of the wet sheet.
You hold, he twists.

The water pours
on the crazy paving.
The weeds grow faster.
The woman from next door

strolls round the back,
ignoring him to give you
a huge bunch of folded
tea towel lilies.

You drop the sheet
in the dirt and kiss her.
Behind you, four elephants,
fig branches in their trunks,

hum The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.
Their tablecloth wings
lift them over the house
and out of view.

remember the muddy route
up the mountain
is marked by yellow posts
lift and place your weight
one foot steady to risk the next
feel your muscles stretch and flex
the deep lake before you
clouds all around so you cannot see the end
step into moss
tiny leaves sink under your boot
rise when you lift your foot
find yourself with only the birds
beside a lake rippling in the breeze
grasses moving lightly with the wind
the smell of rain
the ghosts of ptarmigans fly over the ripples
revealing how the weave of water and earth
hold together
when you are lost remember
you are not the centre
in your heavy boned body
here by the lake
you glimpse through the mist
the birds the water the fish
it is not important whether or not
you find your way down

is lying on a blanket beneath an oak tree,
a picnic spread on a white tablecloth.

She pillows her head on her hands, watches the light
dapple through the leaves. Soon her husband

will stroll to join her but for now she’s enjoying
being alone. She has no pain between her shoulder blades,

her mother is still alive, her grandmother died
gently, her friends are neither dead nor scattered.

She is not afraid she left the front door open
or the tap turned on. She is not afraid she undercooked

the chicken and poisoned her family, nor
that driving home last night she ran someone over

and didn't realise it. In this poem
she simply delights in the sunshine.

Alison Hadley, Louise Everett, Sandra Smith and me
were the gang, but when we played levitation, we needed five.
Eager Mary, with her darned socks and uneven hems
didn’t mind being the corpse. She lay down
on the red patterned carpet and we knelt, two on each side
she looks dead she looks dead we intoned the incantation
she is dead she is dead she is dead she is dead.
When we lifted her one finger each, it was easy, like always.
Then we felt the weight rise from our fingers
and looked up. She was hovering near the ceiling
by the fly-blown lampshade, smiling broadly
in a way I’d never seen before, she even looked pretty.
Don’t let her go, Alison shouted, but her ankle
slipped from my grasp like a wet potato. She giggled
as she blew us a kiss and swam towards the open window.

We said she’d gone to the toilet and never came back.
The hunt went on for days, weeks, years. I lay awake
wondering if she was happier wherever she landed.