From the Lighthouse

The red rail ran rigid around the lighthouse deck.

Below, the sea flurried fierce rocks.

I saw a lone tree, storm survivor, stand severe,

its burnt trunk blackened against the foam.

The guide had warned the group

of danger near the edge,

each adult was to hold the hand of a child.

My son’s grip was a gull’s, longing to fly.

We braced against the cold.

The transparent panes of the huge lamp,

frail-layered in the cloudy light,

belied its powerful night-time pulse,

speaking to ships in the dark.

Threshold

From the bar at the pier’s end

they saw the moon’s pale hands

splay across the sea as if it were a piano,

phrasing waves into a nocturne.

He held his beer glass

steady on the high counter,

as a breeze blew, and her shawl tassels

fluttered against her mouth.

She’d got a raise, she told him.

He was glad, he said.

She watched the night fisherman

step into the shallows, cast his line.

City lights caught

the crescent of the bay,

completing the regretful curve

of ships leaving harbour.

Along the beach

small ordinary fires

warmed the dark.

Free

I lay full-bodied on the beach

and watched my son front the waves.

Cool sky restrained

the sun, a hoop of yellow.

I saw him run, a sandpiper, past

the bathing area, hammocked

by two lifeguard’s poles, towards

fiercer waters, cross-hatched.

Calling him back, my arm stretched

out into a line of warning

I became my father,

Daedalus, afraid for Icarus.

Still, the wild sea mirrored

a naked boy in me, flying.

Frieze

I swim to see sun settling, clear as feeling,
a snake skin helix on the pool floor.

The apartness of light
animates its pattern.

From under my curving arm
a skylight reveals a dream of water, blue.

If I reached down, there would be nothing to take
but the vision satisfies like sleep, or movement.

Record player

I am a turntable,

needle in the groove.

The records of my history

crackle into the air,

motes of dust dancing down memory.

Black vinyl spins me into being –

a hopeless song sung to win a father,

an angry riff ending nowhere.

Tender chords tremble through a remembered house,

ache of forgiveness that came too late.

I am a pile of album covers,

obsolete, stacked in a corner somewhere.

The imprint of a woman gathering poppies on a cardboard sheath,

Schubert’s lament, my mother’s crimson fears.

I set a ring in whirling motion

track a tune to bring back a time

when his love would have made a difference.

The girl merges with the music.

Chapters

Those long afternoons spent alone

in a house swollen with silences,

I burnt with longing –

touching myself as I read ‘The White Hotel’.

Punched by a boy in the gut

when he dared me to kiss him and I did,

hot shame flared.

I lied to the teacher about my tears.

The first time he put his hand there,

under the folds of my skirt,

I stared dumbly into the dark

as his breath burst against my earlobe.

‘Blue Lagoon’ fuzzy on a small TV, 

and children leering like old men

at the couple making love in the water,

I hid my face beneath a prickly blanket.

I wanted what I fought,

we struggled on my cast-iron bed,

breasts exposed and him pushing 

to see what else I would let him do.

I learnt I was here on sufferance. 

Men straddle a world where women yield.

It was years before I could relinquish my body

as a gift, let a lover take what I offered.

Mythical

I am not Icarus

daring with waxen wings to sing a searing sun in flight

I am not Daedalus watching his child destroy a gift

I skim bluer waters beneath the sky

I surf the swells of a more careful sea.

These days are dreams

they barely touch the surface of my knowing,

the nights are clouds scudding across a fierce moon

as a riptide pulls me towards a breakwater.

I am a plant in a pot on your sill

drinking in the light, and growing.

There is safety in speaking.

From this window I see a swallow dart under the eaves,

fear snakes away, the illusions lifting.

20.5