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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Charles Bennett

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Shingle Street

Here is the tide-bone
A whitened spar of beach wood
Weathered like an ossified worm.

It wriggles in the desk light
Licked by electricity:
A root-stem from Shingle Street.

Hungry for the lazy wind
For the smear and swerve
Of a luminous blue dragonfly

And keen as the needle of a compass
It leans towards Orford and Ufford.
One by one the surrounding houses

Douse their lights and disappear
Almost as if they never were.
The strake, of driftwood trembles

And the walls of my study open out
Letting the papers lift away
On spindrift wings.

I raise my eyes from the glyph of bone
And look directly into the night
As it comes towards me over the water.

The wind and the waves are one breath
And all I can hear is the bark of a dog
Sounding the darkness now and again

As if he were listening for his own echo.

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