The Poetry Society

 

First on the beach. Not even a jogger about yet,

The sand is touched with red light and chills your ankles

as you stagger from leg to leg undressing.

You leave your clothes for it to settle in,

 

and cross the strand with its lugworm casts

and plazas of sculpted ripples

to a sea turning over

 

in its sleep. Last night's blue

is still here, waiting,

 

reaching for you.

 

*

 

At first it's all fizz and you have to step in it twice

because it keeps going back on you: touch and go,

but then it makes friends. You could get used to this -

or rather the shallows have warmed to you.

 

The test is when it reaches your leg

or, worse, your groin. Or when it burns

a purple line round your waist.

 

When it grabs your shoulders.

When you duck under

 

and your heart stops.

 

*

 

It's blue and it's up and it's salty and it's down and

it's green and it's in your mouth and it's up and it's

blue and it's in your eyes and you can't see and

it's up your nostrils and you can't breathe and

 

it's an atmosphere you're standing on

and a solid you're seeing through

and a colour you're breathing.

 

You stand on the bottom.

You see blue and green.

 

You breathe water.

 

*

 

It isn't enough to have your sea-legs. You will need

sea-eyes to open the dark, sea-lungs to sponge up

oxygen, and a sea-skin to protect you

in the cold crushing place you're heading for.

 

Set out for the deep, past the headland

where the rocks grip leather ribbons

of kelp. Just above your head

 

the air is gatecrashing.

The tide's coming in

 

as you go out.