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

Birmingham airport on a grey morning
filthy coffee and departure lounges
getting seedier to the final cigarette.
Nicotine patch. Fear of flying.

Leaving land.
Clouds
clouds below us
an ocean of clouds
with cloud islands.

Flying with the sun
with the sun beside us
through an endless morning.
Time standing still.

Land below again
far below
contours flattened
water everywhere
blue and green
dark dark green
What is the green? I ask
Forest you say.
Forest.
A land of forest and water.

Coming in to Chicago and
the pleased shock of hearing
an old black guy
with a label saying:
People Movement Officer, speak
with an American accent.

Stagger out for a fag and see
stretch limos we took
for Mob mobiles

Leaving Chicago
a motherboard of right angle roads
set with small jewels
turquoise aquamarine.
Swimming pools.

Montreal
sweating in sauna bath heat
sitting on the harbour
trailing our feet in the
St Lawrence watching
boats trying to turn into that
unimaginable mass of glacier green water.

So this was where
all the water was going.
I’m down among it now
here
on another continent
where everything is big.

The train
all night the train
sing song wailing
at each crossing
in the forest
slumped under our little blankets
provided by VIA
to comfort us
in the night.

Waking at four in the morning
to stationary silence
a fatality on the line
probably a suicide
it happens often.
Cameraderie of the smoking car
where we gather
carrying our little blankets
to swap moose stories
skunk stories
snow stories

breakfast
eggs sunny side up crisp bacon melon and toast
all on one plate:
Old Favourite

At last
hours late
to Moncton
where life is lived entirely
in two languages
and all the houses are wood.

To Cap Pele
blue sea red rocks and pines
no wonder the French were
first to find this home.
Grande Digue: Great Dyke
sitting round a table
eight of us
comparing cultures conversing
in two languages and eating
stuffed salmon and mouse tits
with endless bottles of good french wine.

First lobster at Bouctouche
on the harbour
in a high wind surrounded by
blue chicory
like a French roadside and the tintinamara
breaking out around us because
its the 14th August.
Acadienne Spectacle in Dieppe
under a night sky
when they remember
with music
the roots of cajun and
1755: La Maudite Guerre and
best not to let anyone know
we are British.

Then P.E.I.
Anne of Green Gables country
camping in storms
and rip tides running
bouncing in the surf like six year olds
under the eye of the life guard.

Back south to look for moose.
We saw the footprints in the bog
we met the people who had seen the moose
we heard the moose in the forest
but we never saw the moose.

Instead an early morning encounter
with a red squirrel
surprised on a fir trunk frozen
a moment head downwards spread eagled
before it loosed its squeaking bark
full volume ringing
from rock to rock across
the hillside warning
its world of my
two legged intrusion
and as I passed
from its territory another
took up the call and then
another so
I must know beyond doubt
that I was in an untamed land
a land that still belonged
to squirrels
and humming birds
and beavers
and the chipmunk I met
living apart on the streets of Alma.

To Wolf Point where
we scattered your mother’s ashes
and a walk on the sea bed
of the Bay of Fundy
when the Highest Tide in the World
was out
picking up scallop shells jewelled with
                                                         barnacles.

More lobster, chowder, salade nicoise
and laughter, so much laughter
about nothing about everything
about being two women in another country
being free in the forest in the sea
on the streets of Montreal and Moncton
being here now in this other place
on the other side of the world
and eating salt beef sandwiches
a mile high.