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

On the doorstep all the paraphernalia
for repairing a tyre. The bike gone.
A billy-can of sump oil and several pieces
of broken tiles shoved against the wall.

Inside the tiles along the corridor remain
                                                      intact.
An entrance some Falmouth chandler boasted of
now years of wear and on the skids.
I’ve returned to the sea. Salt heals.

The town centre is all yachts and clocks
and strangers. Do you remember
those woods where the paths led down
to a shingled beach? I go there most days.

A glancing blow of light on water,
a piece of shale its cool edge striated,
the pricked gold of iron pyrites.

Once a man’s watch
battered but still working.
Today a handful of old copper coins.

The room is large, a bed, a chair,
a table, net curtains and a boxed-in
fireplace. At night, shadows
like fishes float across the ceiling.

You can just see over the houses
to the Fal, the tip of the Russians’ boat
juts above the roofs. Stranded exiles.

The others in this house go about
their own business. Seem quiet enough.
We might brush shoulders on the stairs.

I wash -
drink from cupped hands,
splash the bathroom floor.
I think there are frogs under the pipes.

Cold and grey the Atlantic Ocean.

Do you remember Simon when we last danced?
We put on that tape, the noisy one you liked,

started laughing, jigging about like loons.
Then someone changed the tune, soft, languid,
we mooched around, our mood altered by the
                                                                   song.

You drew me out then into the backyard.
A train roared past the end
of the road, we kissed.

No address at the top of this page,
no signature. The sea is a place for endings,
the geography of land. For beginnings,
the geography of water.