Indefatigable

These pieces form part of a project I'm currently working on in which I imagine myself as an island. I either research or use pre-existing knowledge of the place in question and attempt to capture its essence as seen through my own subjective consciousness. So the result lies somewhere both within and outside of me. These poems are for and of the islands, yet are as soliptic and of-the-moment as the eye seeing them.

Indefatigable

I only had to pass through to lay my name on things;

the stones that slipped out of me became monuments,

frozen points in a history of tracking. My movements

are well-chronicled; the conker fights, the bearing down,

the screaming late-night battles run amuck over Europe.

Back and forth I laboured, either in convoy

or alone, repeating old discoveries, writing them down,

sending them home to be pored over by inhabitants

of the places we’ve emerged from. A list of surnames,

hyperlinks lost to the foam, and the steady wind

behind my back, propelling a restless searching.

Then, you slipped out, oval, smooth as a blood cell,

and came to rest like a peppermint in the centre

of the water. Tameness attracted tameness

and the finches stopped to perch upon my body,

now broken into parts. I was hauled off by the shoulders,

stripped down and taken; the rule of the sea says

I’m worth more in pieces than I’m worth when I’m whole.

I left you there, my sleepless turtle, opening and closing

your mouth as if in doubt, and turned off all the lights.

The moon changed your name and lay down on its side.

The beach is a pale navy. The shell of a lobster,

like our many statues, holds the memory of colour.

They comb the shore: your eggshell, my driftwood, and

this fine sand that mutilates like the language we murmur

together by our fringe of water.

Pampus

I am a fortress in a lake                   

stolen from the sea. Three

security fences control my water;

define family, phylum. Finally,

my artillery is released. Great halls          

of milk. Winding staircases span

my gorged periphery, leading skyward

to twin battle mounds, built               

from concrete. I fire all my cylinders,         

wander the vast network of tunnels           

inside the smooth roundness of my

construction while waiting for the boats       

to come in. An eight-metre dry moat               (protect us)

surrounds these dynamos I lie between.

Holyhead

What need was there to leave the island? From her vantage point at the tip of the mountain all life could be seen: North Stack; South Stack; Môn. Mona, the Mother. To every rock its panopticon. To every cliff its folds, its infinite geologies.

The climbers grew in size and volume, their soft shells increasing in luminosity, their routes becoming more daring. On the mainland, she learned, it takes a lot to be seen. They called to each other with bells on, sweet dreams of white horses, as they clung, strapped to the cliffs by the driven-to sea.

Bridges were built as one thing turned relentlessly into another, pebbledash all the way to the moss-pebble beach. The power plant was opened, closed, thrown between hands like a stoppered rocket, pocketed, opened, closed again. Our own little bivalve up by the Skerries, with never a pearl to be seen.

For every reaction, its opposite and equal. For every bridge, a drilling into stone. For every nest, a theft. For every departure, a resultant unknown not committed enough to not once again leave. For every pub closed, a minor annihilation. I’ll stay where I am thanks, she said at eighteen, as she slipped seamlessly into the mudflats. What comes next remains to be seen.