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

The colour of water
has been a puzzle since
raindrops on the windowpane
first separated themselves from me:
bubbles on a flat plane
playing ‘catch me if you can’.
Not red, as in ball
or green, as in grass
or blue, as in sky
(though sky in my eye
was not often blue).

The colour of water
is murky, muddy, blank
as my grandmother’s eyes,
hidden, forbidden
as the canal, a surface
not to be broached.
Not red, as in simple
or blue, as in guileless
or green, as in gentle
(not even brown,
as in kind).

The colour of water
is fickle, false as the weather,
frail as friendship,
fragile as family bonds:
blue as the wine-dark sea
red as the bridges in Kelvingrove Park
green as the pines at Kananaskis.
(One ruffle of wind
and it’s gone).

The colour of water is grey
with a flickering of silver,
as grey as the ashes
we gave to the Wharfe, starting
their journey from Burnsall
to the slate-North Sea.
Not red, as in blood-clot
or blue, as in lips
or green, as in hearts
unused to grieving.

Water after rain is peat-brown
tanned as the tea Dad poured
in his saucer to cool.
Not blue, as in basilisk eyes
or red, as in hypertensive face
or green, as in larger than life.
I pour him into the cool
flow of the Kelvin,
which rushes the last of him
away from me.

Water in Peyto 
is the greatest puzzle yet.
Never changing, grey skies or blue,
fringes of pine notwithstanding,
opaque, startling, still;
I will merge at my end
with its faraway depths –
Not red, as in ball
or blue, as in sky
or green, as in grass –
but turquoise,
as in me.