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

This morning I began
          the long haul back;
woke to the scent
          of floorboards sanded down;

shook off the lingering doubt
          of last night's dream
then turned to face the sea.
          Blue paint was flaking

from the weathered porch;
          a current, a deep stream
was running underneath,
          unsettling the calm weather

with a reason of its own,
          dividing what things are
from what they seem;
          inviting me to take

the three steps down; to cross
          a stretch of streaked
and hard-ribbed sand
          to where a narrow strip,

a ragged spur, intruded
          like a thought intrudes
across the mind's scoured floor -
          reformed, reshaped, impossible

to map, except at midnight
          and in dreams. From there
I looked back at the stranded house
          (not a house really

but a wooden shack
          thrown up one weekend, improvised
from scraps of nothing
          drifted on the beach:

some planks, a spar, black pitch
          and clouded glass;
so fragile that a gale
          might send it back

to its unconstituted state).
          The shoreline was exhausted.
It was as if I'd said
          to someone at my side -

someone I'd loved once
          in a place like this,
a place of indecision
          where things form and fall apart

I'm going now. It's for the best
          you watch me disappear
into this watercolour
          drained of light

and don't come looking for me
          when I'm gone. That's when I saw her
at the water's edge,
          drawing the string

of an imaginary bow;
          flexing her concentration
in the moment of the act,
          making an arc of nothing

which she held
          and then released.
I was an interloper
          on some lost and timeless scene,

made almost guilty
          by her almost-nakedness,
not knowing if the looking
          was what made the wave collapse.

Tonight I take a candle
          through the place,
discover it by touch,
          wading through tides of darkness

like a lost empiricist
          who only knows for sure
the things he hears and sees.
          While Zeno's arrow

flying through the dark
          flies fast but always occupies
a space forever equal
          to its always-equal size;

aims at the centre
          of its endless flight;
makes for the heart
          and never hits the mark.