It is what we are, mostly –
deconstruct each cell, discard
bowl and goldfish: what remains
is also where we come from,
individual and kind:
that prior element where
once we shoaled and swam. And then.
Water breaks: a child, I sat
high on lorries’ leather seats
beside gruff drivers, afraid
of what was under bridges
cold, grey, implacable and
swirling, calling to me: Come;
and I, ashamed of my fear,
never spoke. Slowly it healed;
look: fishing with my father
photographed in the garden
proud with dinner; my first shark
with my second fiancée,
the tears that joined me to both
incompletely authentic.
There were quite other oceans,
with skinny dipping, hot sand,
air-conditioned sheets, a ship’s
bunk, a coast-road verge. And stretched
on a bench beside the Thames
you listened; my landmarks were
sea-changes, often as not;
for what notably happens
happens often by water,
as each crisis revisits
the first when, heaving or heaved
out to where dry lungs labour,
hurt, awkward, we leave the sea
irrevocably behind.
Except this generation
and the next: oceans are
returning for us, rising
rivers inundate the land:
adults have failed the children,
lore triaged for the long haul.
Yet we will fish it for food,
fable and metaphor, heave
history from its strong flow,
orient ourselves against
marches of breaking surf and
at critical moments still,
staring into that mirror,
see a boy hoping for newts.