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

All through the months
of the dead heat, bodies dark as anchovies
undulating along the beaches of the Riviera

he escapes south, towards the horizon,
accelerating between jetties
into the blue, drawing his own

stubborn geometry, crossing at right-angles
the white of surfboards, jetskis, the diminishing
triangles of yachts in their moorings,

the flat–out life blurring
to an infinite shimmer, the ache of fuel
in his nostrils, the fine greeting of spray.

Deep water, still. Out here
he has come to hunt the creature
streamlining below, monstrous, its weight

the weight of the outstretched season.
He prepares himself, lashing his chair to the planking,
himself to the chair

like Odysseus, knowing how little it would take –
too much desire, too strong a will
to feel the yank, a leap and thrash

and then the sudden slack, the wait
for bated moments, the surface
flattened, beaten again

to tin; the fish with its bloodied mouth
and the whole sea
holding up the summer, the saturated air

and the man beginning to haul the fish
into the breathlessness of it, the day
exhausted, collapsing in on itself,

the gleaming spindled length
crashing down at last
on the deck with the thud and shock

of a god fallen out of the reversed sky,
all the silver and spray and glittering
at his feet, the sweat springing out on him,

his arms and legs scattered with scales
as if he might slip into the water himself
unnoticed, dark-finned, disappearing,

the boat rocking back alone
with its cargo, the day laid out
in slabs, what was precious already dulling.