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James Bell

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By Stealth

Sentinels, is the word first to mind,
on second sight more prosaic —
planed wood, vertically planted
in a sloped concrete bank by the river
for tying up boats, now cracked
and shaped by weather, which has in time
devised sculptures, or ancient obelisks,
that break day by day, bit by bit.

A boy plays in river mud, dips fingers
in his primal origins near a dead seagull,
ignores its decline back to water and mud.
The corpse is public for such a bird —
Instead I imagine it flying far out
on the ocean for a final dignified plunge
through large rising and falling waves.

By stealth a memory of us surprises me,
how we walked under the boughs
of the linden tree, cool and shaded
from the sun, soft aromas from leaves
that looked as if they had been woven
round their branches. I stop and wonder how
the image has emerged in contrast
to these others before me.

the cracked totemic wood
and the fallen seagull begin the recall —
the quiet leafed boughs of other trees.

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