Companion Poem
(for L. C.)
He floats you supine on the sea. Your body
a small island, strangely
human. With compass and quadrant,
he comes to know you,
charting the elongated coastlines
of your torso and limbs,
your fingers’ intimate inlets, riding
charged waters around your face.
At dusk, you hear
the birds singing bright news of
his landfall upon your shoulder
to grazing, oblivious sheep.
He releases you without
thought into the sky,
your body, burning,
a distant star.
With crazed lenses and mirrors,
he comes to know you,
climbing the mountain,
into thin air,
to site you through
night’s telescoping eye.
At dawn,
he names you for a lost sister
found cataloguing God’s praises
at the bottom of a well
sunk in the shoulder of
a small island.
He strips your velvet skin,
your body, a holy
scroll, carried down the mountain
aboard a ship of cloud.
From cloisters and alleys,
he summons the scholars
to interpret the message of
your ancient flesh and bones.
Shanklin Chine
(for Anthony Selbourne)
One stray letter and we might have heard
St. Blasius’s cast iron peal. Now, sun strikes
the booth standing guard atop the trail.
Six quid each — to tame the “savagely grand”.
Backwards climbers, we set our gears
in reverse. Descend to ascend. Treading stone,
gravel, two centuries’ steps, over arched bridges,
back and forth across the stream,
which sings its living lesson, carving
its cleft deeper into greened cliff.
Where the fall pools, I look up,
“oooh” and “aaah” like a pensioner.
You light up another Mayfair,
your cough almost consumptive,
conjuring the ghost who led us here.
The stream makes its own weather.
Bathed in spray, we walk on through
liverworts, mosses, horsetails, ferns;
trees, like tourists, native and foreign,
transplanted from Brazil, Japan;
calls of wagtails, crazed cockatiels.
Down and down we go. Our mountain peak:
a whitewashed cottage, rolling waves.
Pilgrimage is process, too. Arriving,
we do not linger. Arm in arm, turn back on
our heels. A breathless climb to home comforts:
Tea and scones under combed thatch.
But the sea, Jack, the sea…
