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

He sails on a crust through lead seas, alone
for months at a time.
He checks the belly and luff of sails in his sleep.
He climbs a ladder of three-ply wire that hangs from his heart
with hooks greased by the oil of unwashed hair, blacker than bilge water.
He threads tail feathers of the albatross in his rigging,
uses them to check the wind direction when there is none.
He speaks salt to his boat, who says nothing back
which he always hears, whatever time of day or night.
He plaits the Southern Cross with satellites to keep himself awake.
He wears waterproofs of phosphorescence.
He boils potatoes when his cabin becomes colder than the deck.
Papayas sweeten as ballast beneath his feet.
The slosh of water in his toes keeps him balanced.
Whales mother him.
Tuna fish throw themselves into his cockpit.
Dolphins nudge him with punch-lines.
And he only cracks a smile when the penguins tell jokes backwards,
or if a full moon hits floating ice before him
or he makes forty days without seeing another boat.
For when he’s at sea, he prefers
the winched stories of a centreboard sandwiched in his hull,
the pages of a book (more than the leaves of handwritten letters
that still smell of earth and trees),
the song of uninhabited cathedrals that rise as frozen ocean,
the arching of the mast heading to wind: a longbow that’ll fire arrows
every hour, on the hour, to declare to the icy heavens
and its creatures that he is with them.
He is the white wooden-fleshed brother of the kraken
who spirals round the bottom of the world
who has become a myth in the minds of those who met him once.