Gloucester
We didn’t board the whale watch
and we missed the sunset
off the breakwater, likewise
sunrise at Land’s End.
Were we there at all. It seems
we never met
yet the calendar says we did.
Google Calendar. My life’s
in the cloud. A record
of it, partial. To record
was one thing in the 18th century,
something else now, but still the fleeting
finds its encoders, memorious.
The familiar sickness on me, let’s bury
the old forms and grids. Then let’s
graverob ourselves. Go graverobbing.
Was that the sound of old sobbing
the sobbing just now
of a gull? a bark or a laugh
or a bark of a laugh? A full haul
the trawler’s bringing in —
I am half dead but hey.
Glass half full. Half a loaf. A butt end
of a day. A way. A peach
one eats and eats and a pit one saves
a dream of ripe fruit
always within reach
in some other future.
