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

SIGNAL FLAG G: I require a pilot

GOLF

Diesel, and the smell of a fishing fleet.
Alleys, short cuts to the harbour.
Greylags grazing beside the road.
Wind against tide, spume blowing back
in Eynhallow Sound.

A circle of slate-brown heather in the dead grass,
sun: a moment for stones.
Blown sand drowning the hearth,
blue velvet curtains flying,
wind unveiling the plaque.

Viking graffiti. Victorian graffiti.
The rune for far away.
The Italians paint their homesickness
in pinks and green to ward off waters and mist.
Spray across the causeway, wrack flung through the air.

Old stories of longing for home.
No word for this longing to be at sea,
watching from the shattered cliffs.
Foul weather, no boat in sight.
Wind chill too strong to keep on keeping watch.

SIGNAL FLAG J: I am on fire & have dangerous cargo. Keep clear.

JULIETT

Static, and background voices.
Al-lo. Al-lo. A foreign operator,
probably a wrong number
but I'd wanted it to be you.
Strange, to think of your life
the other side of the world.
Don't even speculate: your death
would have been simpler.

Here the barometer's holding 1047:
blue days alternate with fog.
Smokepurple buds swell on the alders;
the ganders are fighting for geese
but it's still too early for eggs.
This is what counts. This is what's real.
Is this what I would have said? Over.

Would you have known what I meant?
You sail round a dreamscript
I dont believe in, sometimes
send messages in a language
I'll never learn.

We expect stories to have endings:
I'll write shipwreck; I'll write typhoon.
Tectonic plates smash a tidal wave
across the ocean, stranding me
on solid ground. Out.

SIGNAL FLAG O: man overboard

OSCAR

He comes familiar, driving here
in a pair of old slippers, unmanly,
as if we are comfortable old friends.
Which we are not: the Atlantic's
between us, and many tides. He leans
towards my cheek and I lean back.

He has come about the wedding,
sits in the armchair by the stove
as if he belongs and I perform
listening body language
to words strangers could speak.

He's noticed the new table. I notice
how his hair's too short at the back,
how a red checked shirt
doesn't suit him, how his eyes
refuse mine. What can I say about that?

How this will not do.
How I've been handed the wrong script:
he should go out and come in
by the other door so I can fling
my arms round the familiar
smell of him hold on until he is here.

I lean forward, offer him another whisky.
The stars are showing when he leaves
and he looks up at the northern sky.
There were moments when I might have made
a difference. This is not one of them.

SIGNAL FLAG S: my engines are going astern

SIERRA

It's less than ten minutes from dockside to airfield.
Oilskins are packed, sheets coiled. Shipshape.

Herring gulls pick over nets piled on the quay for repair.
The new lifeboat dwarfs what's left of the fleet:

Sir Max Aitken's dark hull mirrors the waves: a quiet day and
they're cleaning her orange superstructure and heavy gear.

How many times have we sailed here before?
I even remembered the Beasts of Holm, though it's calm today.

I could still steer on the wind and winch the genoa
while you hoisted the main. These things come naturally.

I wonder what you are thinking, but do not ask.
Have we been trying to sail through time into who we used to be?

Airborne north of Loch Marivaig under the cloud,
the white sand of Uig still in the soles of my shoes,

there's a moment that belongs to the past: a figure
waves from the deck of a small boat heading into the wind,

south, where the sea is sheet metal and the Shiants float
like two grey creatures turning their hump backs on one another.