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

'X' marking other territory, Keep Out, the cliff path leading
to the field of wheat and so we take another route. The
'X' made by interlocking boughs and sometimes I have seen two
pitch forks forming the sign. Here the wheat bends in a wave
and beyond the existing sea waves separate us from dunes and bathers.
                                                                                                              Here
we are retracing family outings, jolly ghosts, kite flying
and the memory of dogs who couldn't quite believe the sea. It was
always the same; parents walking ahead and keeping to the path
whilst we became aeroplanes or secret police, always in
several worlds at once, always unprepared for the invasions of
adults, unsettled by questions and references and expectations. Even
in August sometimes wearing a school blazer and cap or
forced into a suit on Sunday. Always discovering the dead
bird or the mutilated crab and carrying shells and sea smoothed
fragments of glass. Once, after the aquarium had closed,
I followed my father up the steps to the car park
and wind seized my cap. Half an hour later he was still obsessed
with finding the place, looking for the imagined spot where
it rested, considering the way I might retrieve it; the
cost. Others became involved. What was I going to
say to mother? The weight of adult logic; its
gravity. The way it pulled down; built its barriers,
reduced. X marks the spot where I did not murder my
father, did not push him, let him slip or fall,
let the words and questions ride out across the cliff
tufts, the gulls roaring above, let the cap become
another thing, the rain now freezing my face.
Pocket money would be withheld to pay for the cap.
In the cottage that night I thought of a nest,
the eggs neatly lodged in dark blue cloth.