| Surely no one has let the cold jeg their knees
|
| Quite happily
|
| Lined up a ruler against the seam
|
| Where the sky on a too-full stomach
|
| Tucks itself into the sea
|
| Only I see the water
|
| Sugar-glazed to stillness
|
| Like two taps with a spoon
|
| Would split its lid in two
|
| The wind that burls me
|
| Does not feel second hand
|
| It’s as true as a first-word
|
| That repaints the front room it cuts through
|
| Sounds stretched to an echo
|
| So no one remembers how language used to land
|
| The sand
|
| Is out the packet new
|
| Branded with my shoes
|
| Maybe the sun is knackered too
|
| Like each of us
|
| Wrapped up in our work, and ourselves
|
| Dreaming of being shelled by our backpacks
|
| And swallowed by the beach
|
| Maybe it’s a parent
|
| Too tired to keep playing
|
| That lies through their teeth
|
| Because all pain is small change
|
| In the cost of wonder
|
| Rising somewhere else while we see it sleep
|
| Returning its light
|
| In the nick of time
|
| So that not a grain is lost
|
| Not a bloat of cloud burst
|
| Not a wave out of place
|
| I must be the first
|
| Everything I have
|
| Was given to me clean
|
| Like the sky burns just to blush my face
|
| I have held it up
|
| Ungloved
|
| Crushed seaweed beneath me
|
| Breathed in the beach until I have a new set of lungs
|
| But I have never wiped sunrise down my jumper
|
| To get rid of fingerprints
|
| I never took my shoes off as I came in |