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

When a sail boat is beating to windward
It moves against the force which makes it move.
In the same way these lines tack back through stuff
Revisiting the image with the word.

***

Before daisy-chains became soft and girlie
You sat in the summer constructing them
Selecting daisies with a long and thick stem.
You split one near the bottom and gently
Threaded another stem through the new eye
Until the head locked like a stopper knot.
You kept going, always on the lookout
For one you could finish with, which you'd try
To fit the first one's head through. It took
Practice and patience to perfect this loop
Articulated with flowers, to grope
Big fingered and ungainly, and make
Something beautiful and useless at no cost
As you sat oblivious to the world, engrossed.

I nipped next door for Granny's macaroons,
Their rice paper bases were like the host,
Bits stuck to my mouth and dissolved just
The same. Teacups and separate silver spoons
To measure and stir with. The almond taste
Melted and went heady with the hot tea -
They were a home-made madeleine for me.
And now as I'm recovering the past
Having had another of those biscuits
Yesterday, we're standing at the window
Watching sparrows and greenfinches come and go
And I am unaware of the minutes
Passing themselves off as permanent
In the pre-reflective world where things aren't spent.

Our mackerel feathers streamed out from the stern
Pretending to be minnows. When one bit
I pulled in the weight and wiggle of it
And carefully watched dad deal with it, to learn
The ritual. Steadily the muscled
Water came in until I could make out
A quick black pattern, then it was in the boat,
Dad gripping its middle as it struggled,
Taking the hook from the mechanical jaw
And hitting its head hard on the gunwale.
The chaotic-seeming scene and the smell,
Scales everywhere and the still twitching, poor
Fish in a bucket repelled and thrilled us.
Dad washed his hands in the sea without fuss.