FOG-BORN

These words of doubt in the mind
and silence, looking
out of the train window
at the marshland mantled
in familiar, grey blankness,
a silhouetted world
the heart mimics
in self-defence.

Barges in the shallows,
in the still swarm of dots,
stuck in their outlines
of seaweeds and slime;
a seagull’s slowly beating wings
soon swallowed by the sky,
you hear a cackling call
and rest for an instant in its wake
and think –in this way
I would like to pass, in a silence
broken and reaffirmed,
I would like to last
for a full long howl
with nothing to insert.

Not these words, threads
that spill over on the silvery damp
and linger undone, in their maze,
having to start all over again,
not these words
when your turn comes,
these lines leaving lines
unsaid,
not these words
consumed in the curls
of their own utterance,

but just this sky-swarm in silence
and, in the strength of blindness,
a cry that doesn’t need a why,
like out of the womb’s.



This poem appeared in "Pushing Out The Boat", Issue 10 ( North-East Scotland's Magazine of New Writing).
I think it is my most recent "fog-born" poem... in these days the fog is back in Venice and in the flat countryside nearby giving that full typical sense of autumn-winter, that enveloping feeling of closeness, despite the damp and cold, and light from shops and windows filtered in an almost blindness, a sort of "braille" of the soul.