After WS Graham

Something beckons, suckered to the hull

that we must search the blinking shores for.

We are blindfolded, clad in light 

but bracken turns boots black,

hunger drives us back to hearths.

We are so starved we cannot

search.

Nights compress, drenched sand, salt frets.

We cling on, carve out the nothing, 

feed in words, hear voices leagues away

deadened, caught in traps.

Can we dive to the depths, resist the lies

that float bladder-white,

truths spangling our naked sides?

Listen still.

The tide comes, fathers slewed hours,

leaves what it chooses. In the interior

an owl is snagged on trees, the moor calls

and we still wear the blindfolds.

We forget what we are looking for.

We fetch the notes from gales,

pin them round our hearth fires.

The man stands by his pick-up

truck and whirrs the automatic

windlass into life. Bob, Bob’s 

wife and Bob’s wife’s niece watch.

When he arrived, he eyed Bob’s car,

scratched his baseball-cap, said the ad

had had him understand it wasn’t quite

so… But he’d take it. For parts.

Bob has been busy: he’s jettisoned

the other contents of the corrugated iron

garage. Only two prehistoric oil-cans –

‘good for ten years yet’ – get saved.

The cable tautens, and Bob’s car –

insofar as it can still be called 

a car – ploughs into daylight. No tyres.

No engine. Chassis on the gravel.

The man operates the controls

with one thumb. ‘Can we help at all?’

‘No, it’s OK.’ Bob’s wife’s niece’s small

son’s playing with a bucketful of stones.

The pick-up humps up the unmade lane.

Bob’s car rides piggyback, bumping side

to side. They turn onto the main road

at the top, and everybody goes inside.