Watertight
Ice creaks as I step on the gravel pit,
a white plate-metal lid recast as rink,
snow-blinding me to what lies underfoot
- Alpheus sealed in an earthen tun.
Stiff fingers flex, sore bones crack with relief,
Alpheus is cramped, flat-packed beneath
in a cell too small for standing or stretching,
his body trapped in frozen skin.
Imagine ice-skating on that scab,
sliding on the ceiling of his habitat.
I don't think twice, reckless and weightless,
soles firm on water as a waterboatman's.
But weight comes suddenly with seeing
- a sign, white words on red, stands like
the pillars of Hercules, unmistakable,
DANGER DEEP WATER it says.
It's his refrain; a border post for lakes,
for goitrous rivers where deep water can't
be seen. I see the words and sense Alpheus
herded with the current into pens.
My confidence dissolves like rice paper
on the tip of water's tongue - distance becomes
the longhand of a clock: its tick the click
of jaws that open wide, then fasten shut.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The