Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Why?  Because he could, because the sands were there,
a pale flat sheet pulled out between the strong arms
of the bay, like a washerwoman’s laundry;
and what was seabed is uncovered, laid bare
and fresh, untouched.  Its huge wingspan.
His bare feet squelch in sand.  He feels the pull of it
around his ankles;  plods on;  one foot heaved out
and then the other.  Then a flowing current, clear water
washing caked mud off his skin.  He sees the ghost
of hoofprints fading in wet sand, the hollows
made by his companions’ boots filling now
with seawater:  these little pools, these newformed landscapes
that we make as our footsteps take us over earth.
The land ahead, the woven shining cloth that leads to it -

and then he’s deep in, up to his knees, he sees himself drawn down, sinking, mouthfuls of sand:  all the words he’s yet to speak
and write stopped in his throat.  And why?
Because he wanted to defy his earthbound life,
to walk across the sea, become amphibian, a man
turned seal or otter - and he cannot.  He yanks his feet up,
grabs his neighing horse’s belly like a raft, pulls himself
onto the creature’s back.  It sways, drags up soaked fetlocks,
staggers to a sand bar.  They falter on, man and horse;
they’ll cross the bay by nightfall, feel flat unmoving land
under them again.  The horse, rubbed down, will eat its oats
and sleep.  And he, he will relish being human, not webbed
or gilled, but here, splayed feet on solid ground,
the tongue inside his mouth not bound by sand.