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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Mike Barlow

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The boat in my brain

has long since slipped its moorings, cast off
from the quayside, the rower
jumped for dry land, away
to the nearest bar to lose himself.

The painter’s spliced end trails the surface
like a finger on an idle afternoon,
rainwater sloshes across the boards
and a tin bailer clinks its bell.

It bumps me in the night, breaks
the current of a dream, wakes me
as a rising tide
might nudge a dozing pilot.  I jump.

My weight rocks the strakes
like old scales
suddenly struck into life.  I bale,
slide oars through rowlocks and pull

with no clue where I’m heading,
whether back to the quay
where a lost figure waits
or out to the grinning horizon.

Mike Barlow’s collection, Living on the Difference (Smith/Doorstop), was shortlisted for the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize 2005 for Best First Collection.

Page(s) 40

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