Joan Fry
The Maroon: Swanage lifeboatmen
The carpet half laid; the tooth half stopped;
the building partly built; the house half sold;
a sack of letters slumped against a porch;
a paint-brush left to drip from under-coated sill;
a leak to spring from unattended pipe;
the party revellers to riot unreproved—
the bouncer bounced, over the wall, away—
So, as the waters arch, the boat drives through,
the languages of different trades
lost in the common tongue of tides
of breeches buoys and drogues
fenders and flags, loud-hailers, carrying-sheets.
And if the call should come by dead of night,
hidden in folds of wind, an intermittent flare,
they tug on boots of giant martyrdom,
fill lungs with life to last.
Anonymous they wade into the dark.
Page(s) 35
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The