The Special Correspondent Waits
I lip-read gossip, chain drink tea,
watch the waitress in the mirror,
buy strangers meals for news
I can't make news of yet,
how Geordie's boat's been gone two days
and no-one's shown a face
at the Big House for a week.
From time to time
I phone my column inches back,
walk round the dock,
let kites of thought tug
like the truth escaping me.
What started with a rumour -
a body on a beach - turned out to be
a sea-logged bale of hemp,
snagged in a creek, a strip of police tape
twitching in the breeze.
The only thing you can be sure of next they say,
is the spring tide, low pressure belting in.
Across the estuary plovers scud,
an old man trudges
from his beached boat, digs for worms.
He treads the shoulder of the fork,
levers, lifts, shakes, bends to fill the bucket,
treads the fork again.
I sense the way news
breaks down here
like a quick shift in the current
you only notice out at sea.
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