WATER MUSIC
I.
Curled on the couch, I read Heaney,
the earlier, watery poems
where the words themselves seem wet;
they lap and spill from the
page
like the run of stars on a cold night.
The river is grey with drifts
of wind stroking it to ripples
-- fish scales, turtle shells --
one lane remains untouched,
blue-silver as sleek dolphin backs.
I turn the pages and Undine
unfolds her yielding body,
gleaming like mercury,
the seal woman dips her skin
and returns to cool current.
My son cries from his cot,
his voice matching the cartwheel-
call of gulls across the water.
I lift my head and the Channel
is all mirror; lullaby calm.
The net the fishermen pull
is full of grief: the stilled voice
of a tiny child, mouth lugging
water to pores and cells;
limbs washed to myth.
As the river lifts its face
to the shrouded sky, the soft dance
of rain is the sound of my boys
plashing in peat-dark puddles,
their joy a dance of water.
II.
2am. The sky is awash
with milky stars, the breeze
scudding the sea to peaks.
I'm listening to faint notes
rising like bubbles in a glass,
they lift off the waves, and haunt
my footsteps on the damp grass.
I've come for wood.
The darkness and cool wind
wrap around me, sifting
the indentations my feet make.
I lean into trees, feel night-breath
gust past, filling me with shadowy wings:
fleet lift of owl slashing the black,
soft flap a foil for scissor-sharp cut,
face like foam blown from a wild sea.
And I hear the cry,
the piercing anguish
that could be mouse-shriek,
rabbit-fear, but know it
as my child pulled from the deep
like a netted fish gasping for air.
The notes are gone,
the garden dark and filled
with the turned-away faces of stars.
Originally published in Blue Dog n.2, 2002.
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