At the shore was a curve of holiday bay. Two rafts bob.
Grouped boys and girls. Being as good as it gets.
I go in for a swim. In goes a girl too,
Her curve of breast, surprising as the moon,
In my head as I dive down. Into the muddy three or four
Dull grey feet out beyond the long waves.
You open your eyes down there,
To everythings' fabulous colour.
A bright and busy cartoon fish, red and white striped
With a round kiss for a mouth.
Darts by in search of itself. Being young.
The older ones stand back on their tails.
Seahorse like. Fluttering.
When we're all done swimming we play ballgames.
Passing and shooting.
Winning and losing.
Making our own way back.
ooo
Burnished gold
Ach the burnished gold crumpled letterbox
That was one way out of there. It's curve. Smile of possibility.
Ach the sun dips down. In the ship packed port. Thinking, for all the world,
Past spiky spires and catchy crosstrees, that,
If they do look up, everyone around will see Just another loser.
On their way down. The sun collapses, from one crosstree to the next.
Me? Too hot to handle, that sun thinks. And then, cooler,
So this is falling.
ooo
Sea Level
The flat. Or pretty close to it.
Sea that looks like you could walk all over it.
You stay in cities that edge it
Not going anywhere new now.
All very different from the mountains it's taken you ages to get out of.
Mountains here are a dream.
Inlets. Lochcarron. Kintail. Come down to the flat.
We looked at a place there once, that had reached back into the hills
But come down to the shore, to the road and everything new.
Like everyone.
ooo
Ferry
Queuing for the ferry. From a popular seafront. If you're not getting the ferry you can still come down to
watch. There are cafes. Pushed back into buildings. Because the seafront itself is all white lines and ferry
loading. Like vehicular comings and goings was the only show in town. These days. Language students eat
icecream. I'm driving round in circles on the empty white lined tarmac trying to find the end of the queue I'm
meant to be in. In my little white car. I appear to have jumped the queue . So I circle round again, like I've
just arrived, and when I come back to where I think the end of the queue was, all the cars have gone. Taken
onboard! I drive down the ramp that is filling up with cooly pedestrian language students. I don't have to be
told. It's the only way to go. I have to shout at the language students, to stop them damaging my car. The ramp
is onto a pontoon. A sort of halfway place. With no one saying where to go next. There are a number of ferries
throbbing like they might be about to leave. Everything's up in the air. Those ramps look like the sort of thin
metal that make your heart go into your mouth. When everything you've got is in your car. And there's only those
metal plates between getting on and sinking like a stone. Your heart goes into your mouth. Like your mouth was a
ledge your heart might leap from. I follow the ramps there are. And reach a ferry. Which appears to be the right
one as ferrymen are beckoning me on in my car. I drive around the deck. Between white lines. To where they say I
should go, at the stern. A space at the side on the fantastically sloping deck. Surely they can't expect me to
park there. To manouvre into that. Those bulky ferry men. Who beckon. In between covering up the most recently
parked cars with tired blue seafaring canvas. To protect them from the weather. They are waiting for me like I'm
one of those last ones who always cause a problem. All the cars seem to have shrunk. To a pocket size. Like I
could get out of mine and vrrm it into the space by hand. But I'm going to do this properly. And I do. Over the
complex slope. The bulky ferrymen aren't bothered. They take over. And swing me a salty old rope. To haul my
pedestrian self up the slope to the passenger deck. Maybe it's because I'm late. Surely not all drivers and
passengers are dealt with in this way. I can do this, on my own. But there's an old man and his son still on the
cardeck. Together the three of us make it up the slope, to a door. The door has been boarded up with damp
chipboard. Which we unpick to get through. Bulky ferrymen are hanging around, waiting for things to get under
way. They don't help. The door goes through into a luggage hold. Racks and stacks of everyone's luggage. Enough
to make you think you could lose everything here. And never see it again. You better hold onto what you've got.
And pull yourselves up the stairs that are starting to shake. With the getting under way.
