Philip Wells
Silent rhythm
In the gallery of memory
that is this sailor’s final room,
rhythms rise like fingers
to caress the untouchable sores -
they are balm warmer than sun
yet can sting like salt in the sea.
From the lectern’s echo
or the camaraderie of bunks,
rhythm may be St Elmo’s fire
that flashes up the night-sea fears,
or our own outscreaming of the waves
as the surf thumps in the cave of our pores.
In this final room Sam remembers the sharks,
tells tales of fins the size of liners, confesses
his late-life love of poems, longs for the old
alertness of oceans; then coughs with joy
as I read him lost worlds, the rhythm
of the sinking stars, the cargoes and the chains.
On an evening altar of light Sam conjures
a treasured page, reads it like an upright bear,
raging with such lonely wonder.
In the waves of echo after speech,
like the cycling tides his rhythms ring,
ready for the roar of silence.
Page(s) 55-56
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