Jane Routh
St. Etheldreda flees south, to land where there’ll be a yacht club in thirteen centuries’ time
There would have been a boatman.
Only a local man would know the tides
– strongest where the water is deep –
and shifting mudbanks behind the island.
The boat would have been small:
we could ask our friend the fisherman.
A beggarwoman and two nuns.
It would have been night, slack water
unless she willed the flood-tide not to ebb
for seven full days and nights, like last week
when she cut her husband off.
Spoken instructions were against the rule
but a man able to read wind in the clouds
and the shifts of brown waters
would have noticed the beggar’s slim hand
hesitating at her neck. And put it
from his mind: a capsized boat has no rights.
No lights, just his thick hands on the oars
feeling for the pulls of eddy and tide
and pausing for the noises of the night.
The nuns and the beggar would not have heard it
the way he did, the watery swish of reeds
but they would have felt the wind drop,
the boat no longer rocked by waves
as he dipped quietly between the tall grey plumes.
This is The Haven. He would have noticed
the smallness of the beggar’s feet on the soft brown mud.
If we were to cross her, she’d cheat
and perform a miracle, press her stave,
say, into the ground, until it thickened branched leafed:
Fraxinus excelsior.
She played by the old rules, and never mind
explanations: there were no doubts.
See, here is the foundation stone.
Only a local man would know the tides
– strongest where the water is deep –
and shifting mudbanks behind the island.
The boat would have been small:
we could ask our friend the fisherman.
A beggarwoman and two nuns.
It would have been night, slack water
unless she willed the flood-tide not to ebb
for seven full days and nights, like last week
when she cut her husband off.
Spoken instructions were against the rule
but a man able to read wind in the clouds
and the shifts of brown waters
would have noticed the beggar’s slim hand
hesitating at her neck. And put it
from his mind: a capsized boat has no rights.
No lights, just his thick hands on the oars
feeling for the pulls of eddy and tide
and pausing for the noises of the night.
The nuns and the beggar would not have heard it
the way he did, the watery swish of reeds
but they would have felt the wind drop,
the boat no longer rocked by waves
as he dipped quietly between the tall grey plumes.
This is The Haven. He would have noticed
the smallness of the beggar’s feet on the soft brown mud.
If we were to cross her, she’d cheat
and perform a miracle, press her stave,
say, into the ground, until it thickened branched leafed:
Fraxinus excelsior.
She played by the old rules, and never mind
explanations: there were no doubts.
See, here is the foundation stone.
Jane Routh’s Circumnavigation (Smith/Doorstop 2002) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Page(s) 5
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