Day at Clevedon Pier


She went swimming.

Suck Inhale

Fluttering inches drop

Hands moving unthinking in old habits and rituals

Into cobalt coiling inwards, rippled fluting like arched prototypes of cathedrals,

with seaweed crested shade pink lucent nails diving through

the feet cutting an arc leaving stunned silver limescale

Like the boards on the walk submerged in air, the lights shining dully in a row into

links drawing down in pointed wake transporting the glisten of

the surface to the shadow lattice at the bottom,

pale smoke colours the light-like ink twisting again, hair misting through jade scattered and glinting from the neck of an aunt lost at sea

Still the eyes search for old spaces or spaces never been but should have been, ice-creams uneaten, sandy paths untrod, the voices raised and not raised running over endlessly

Pale bumps, hair standing, Grey, green and legs limp White eyes, swing swinging From far away sky green people hugging and feathers singing through the air to sink themselves into cork all the things known dull in panes of refracted light but with a coiling twisting around the thing that knows, not from not breathing but not letting breathe and

SHUDDER as the glossy headed flock flies past in the spaces undisturbed and a vaporous hand rests over the breast alone

leaving no trace but in memory and mind and in the record of each mad moment all flow and ebb in this dense sub terrain

with tender panels with trembling walls with the floor arching in a caught breath under eyes like planets and head inclined so

Like a poor plaster of David sending up wet flakes inscribed with the veins of leaves, Unspooling the face faithfully for the lined bud beneath

Upturned to watch blindly, up at the airy eaves

She is in the water alone, collecting her scattered sand

There is a moment twisted, constricted, the heart caught up in a hair’s breath, snug as the oar of a longshoreman in water Coming up weightless

and she half curving, prickling with the remembrance of other eyes looking across the distance Smoothly lined, from the back of the hall gazing out willingly at her willingly supplicant, stark like dew; holding caresses the frisson of movements delicate as dance bending in unison over the longing spine



escaping in a small sigh, carried forward, Outstretched, close by –

And then the beat has passed, she lies suspended, arms akimbo,

a life-long breath escaping shades of regrets

but she is pulled back up, saltwater on her face

sand in her eyes, here, back again, here

looking at the stick pale boards of the pier

mud from shoes wiped carelessly,

a half eaten pasty fat and leaking into the water,

dull in the moonlight.