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

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Marlo Bester

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When fish leave

Today was the first day
That the waiting area didn’t tempt me
Instead I cast a half-glance at the heated bowl
Walked the even length of the queue to the last bench
To where the air was thick with burnt logs and fresh turned
                                                                                  mud
And on the thin winter arms of English trees
The leaves rushed together like flat gold-fish
Schooling in the same mottled light.

All year from the pond
They raised their huge slow-blinking eyes to it
They’d surveyed the breadth of the branches to it
And finally, precariously, they’d jumped to it
Replanting themselves like suicidal Japanese lanterns
Closer to that proud thing that fights like the basement bulb
To claim the one hard inch of cold
It can somehow always will its way through

And the air was tight enough
To read the British Airway on the bird
And I thought of all those faces it held like newly hatched
                                                                                  eggs
And that someone was bound to be awaiting
Their arrival
As well

 

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