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walking up John Street thinking of you I saw a slash of sea between houses and felt — as always, no matter mood, its or mine — as though it was the source of language and language the source of itself

When I woke, the waves had gone black, turning over the macerated curd of the ocean bottom, heaving its sludge onto the beach. Some storm far out, I thought, had ravaged the sea, stirred up its bed, sent the whole mess flying to shore. At my feet I found a grave of starfish, broken and gnarled among the fleshy snipes and heads. Every shade of death covered the sand. It looked hopeless in the pale day but for the birds, a congress of gulls, terns, and the rarest plovers, calm for once, satiated, a measure of the one law: this sea will claim it all— feed them, catch them, grind their complicated bones.

Give me a church made entirely of salt. Let the walls hiss and smoke when I return to shore. I ask for the grace of a new freckle on my cheek, the lift of blue and my mother’s soapy skin to greet me. Hide me in a room with no windows. Never let me see the dolphins leaping into commas for this water-prayer rising like a host of sky lanterns into the inky evening. Let them hang in the sky until they vanish at the edge of the constellations — the heroes and animals too busy and bright to notice.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking. I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

(Bubbling and spuming as if trying to talk under water, I address you thus:) Must I pretend not to love you (in your present bloom, your present perfection — soul encased in fleshly relevance) so you won’t believe me just another seabed denizen vying for your blessed attention? Some of us (but not you) are so loosely moored to our bodies we can barely walk a straight line, remaining (most days) only marginally conscious. We stagger and shudder as buckets of   blood or sperm or chocolate mousse or spittle or lymph or sludge sluice continually through us... I love the way you wear your face, how you ride this life. I delight in the sight of you, your nervous, inquisitive eyes, though I try to act otherwise. Being stoned out of thy mind only amps up thy fearsome brain wattage. Pardon my frontal offensive, dear chum. Forgive my word-churn, my drift, the ways this text message has gotten all frothy. How was it you became holy to me? Should I resist, furiously? Is this your true visage, shaken free, flashing glimpses of what underlies the world we can see?Do not forget me murmurs something nibbled by fish under the sea. After dark you’re quick-silvery, wet /slick /glistening. Don’t make me chase you, dragging my heavy caresses, a pair of awkward, serrated claws, hither and yon. Give me a swig of   whatever you’re drinking, to put me in tune with the cosmos’s relentless melt, with the rhythms of dish-washing, corn-shucking, hard-fucking, bed-wetting, and the folding of   bones of other loves into well-dug graves...    may we never become lost to the world.

That sail which leans on light, tired of islands, a schooner beating up the Caribbean for home, could be Odysseus, home-bound on the Aegean; that father and husband's longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name in every gull's outcry. This brings nobody peace. The ancient war between obsession and responsibility will never finish and has been the same for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since Troy sighed its last flame, and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the conclusions of exhausted surf. The classics can console. But not enough.

Crash on crash of the sea, straining to wreck men; sea-boards, continents, raging against the world, furious, stay at last, for against your fury and your mad fight, the line of heroes stands, godlike: Akroneos, Oknolos, Elatreus, helm-of-boat, loosener-of-helm, dweller-by-sea, Nauteus, sea-man, Prumneos, stern-of-ship, Agchilalos, sea-girt, Elatreus, oar-shaft: lover-of-the-sea, lover-of-the-sea-ebb, lover-of-the-swift-sea, Ponteus, Proreus, Oöos: Anabesneos, who breaks to anger as a wave to froth: Amphiolos, one caught between wave-shock and wave-shock: Eurualos, board sea-wrack, like Ares, man’s death, and Naubolidos, best in shape, of all first in size: Phaekous, sea’s thunderbolt— ah, crash on crash of great names— man-tamer, man’s-help, perfect Laodamos: and last the sons of great Alkinöos, Laodamos, Halios, and god-like Clytomeos. Of all nations, of all cities, of all continents, she is favoured above the rest, for she gives men as great as the sea, to battle against the elements and evil: greater even than the sea, they live beyond wrack and death of cities, and each god-like name spoken is as a shrine in a godless place. But to name you, we, reverent, are breathless, weak with pain and old loss, and exile and despair— our hearts break but to speak your name, Oknaleos— and may we but call you in the feverish wrack of our storm-strewn beach, Eretmeos, our hurt is quiet and our hearts tamed, as the sea may yet be tamed, and we vow to float great ships, named for each hero, and oar-blades, cut of mountain-trees as such men might have shaped: Eretmeos, and the sea is swept, baffled by the lordly shape, Akroneos has pines for his ship’s keel; to love, to mate the sea? Ah there is Ponteos, the very deep roar, hailing you dear— they clamour to Ponteos, and to Proëos leap, swift to kiss, to curl, to creep, lover to mistress. What wave, what love, what foam, For Oöos who moves swift as the sea? Ah stay, my heart, the weight of lovers, of loneliness drowns me, alas that their very names so press to break my heart with heart-sick weariness, what would they be, the very gods, rearing their mighty length beside the unharvested sea?

1 mudstone crumbs shell fragments finest sand tidal grind every day every night a medium of crawling life compressed baked lifted blown away salt marsh shallow soil shingle marram grass fescue grass tidal path creek of pollen falls in whispers in the clay in the loam in the top of  the soil in the sand in the molt of  the sea in the light sand the light sound of shift in the swash zone waves burrow for release in the bend of  the body I balance my current only takes me back when seawards seawards is the call of my curve & no turning 2 Two large cormorants flew rapidly and very low across the water heading directly towards Langstone Rock, where Dawlish Warren joins the coast just beyond the western edge of the Exe estuary. Their wing tips were almost touching the choppy water. This must have been about 7:45 on Friday morning; I was thirty yards or so out in the sea, only my head visible between the waves that the cormorants flew in among as they powered along one behind the other. I had come down the concrete lifeboat ramp and taken just a few steps on wet sand scattered with various shells, little gleaming stones, and scraps of seaweed, getting quickly into the cool water. The sky was piled up with dark gray cloud overhead but clear and bright at the horizon. The two birds passed close by and continued on their way indifferent to me watching them from the water and they gave no indication if they saw anything unusual. she swam only at night on the spring tides in the silk light of water slipping her over the mud flats when they studied why she did it drifted far beyond her limits though it made her vulnerable to prey several theories came but none swam at night in a spring tide in the silk light unsure of itself becoming only what is left after breaking 3 herring gull black-headed gull arctic tern oystercatcher turnstone sanderling carrion crow jackdaw white wagtail rock pipit peregrine kestrel buzzard brent goose cormorant kingfisher farther out gannet stomach of fur coughed up at low tide stranded snowfall of fur dusting the mouth sanded out of this worms fall soft as whispers coiling into faun- ing “Aphrodita” & out of her hair come the corpses of a swallowed sea 4 mussel shell oyster shell clam shell cockle shell whelk shell limpet shell winkle shell razor shell crab shell lobster shell prawn shell sea lettuce she windblown sand seashell sand shifting sand she sea sandwort sea rocket sea holly she half sand she both sea she half sea she both sand she is a both-formed thing she wool sand cotton sand wood sand she sea leather sea crystal sea skin she half wool she both skin she half skin she both wool she is a woollen skin she asphalt soil nylon soil sandy soil she landscape escape seascape she half soil she both scape she half scape she both soil she escapes 5 And swimming my slow breast stroke out to the channel I saw a darkwinged butterfly come flying in above the waves, moving with the breeze, heading for the dunes. Was this a migrant painted lady, third generation, from Africa? drifter           on the surface upside           down dead water floater             upper                  sheltered on the littoral fringe lower                  very sheltered swimmer upward                 of hundreds    of thousands of hundreds    of thousands of hundreds   of thousands   of hundreds   of thousands   of hundreds of thousands   of hundreds   of thousands   of hundreds   of thousands        of hundreds        of thousands       of hundreds             of thousands of hundreds of thousands of hundreds             of thousands        of hundreds        of thousands       of hundreds             of thousands        of hundreds        of houses             of hundreds             of houses of          of hundreds        of houses             of hundreds             of houses of          of sands               of houses             of sand                      of houses of          of sand                 of hums               of sand                      of hums                 of sand                 of hum                 of sand                      of humming

I Weed, moss-weed, root tangled in sand, sea-iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken, and you print a shadow like a thin twig. Fortunate one, scented and stinging, rigid myrrh-bud, camphor-flower, sweet and salt—you are wind in our nostrils. II Do the murex-fishers drench you as they pass? Do your roots drag up colour from the sand? Have they slipped gold under you— rivets of gold? Band of iris-flowers above the waves, you are painted blue, painted like a fresh prow stained among the salt weeds.

How slow an approach when viewed from a distance. How more likely the encounter if the ground is clear A voice saying always “go ahead” calls it freedom Above the 27th parallel is the heat I know as home, in my bones always untouched by city’s cool centrifuge that refracts a kind of light which bursts and vanishes on the spot Heading North, I escape the fray Green hem of the outskirts, roadside façade of forest, hiding a casement of burnt earth, silent as myself Outside, a poet ghosts a window Writing back into life his night parrots. I drive lines from water to water, guzzle roadhouse coffee Warming up, there is a conflict of appetite, a suburban tree, black with cockatoos shucking almonds A dolphin trapped in a rock pool Cane toads storming the Kimberley in wet, find it planted with sugar An olive python curled under a van belly beaded with feral kittens After three days of seated travel I lunge from the car, sprint the length of jetty, deaf to the man screaming warning. Only in midair do I look down to the sea, the time it takes to panic Two yellow-and-black krait, vivid bandwidth of danger, turning on the turquoise surface, and all I can do, is fall