Everything
Else
The
rain is nails,
a
rusty thunderhead of cut-wire sharps unloading
on
the roof slates, the lane our cottage clings to
clattered
with clouts, ten-pennies, brads,
heaped
bristling in the gulley hoppers.
We
set out regardless, past the harbour,
to
the folds of coast
old
continents scrummed vertical.
The
fossil record washes from the cliff face,
a
varicosity in the sediment, a crumble
of
conditional repair
kicked-over
here in hard rain, seven hundred million years
tracing
footprints, pair by pair.
Over Weymouth harbour, skies clearing
to
an image risen through the cloud: Spitfire,
engine
grumbling, rolls three-sixty
over
roofscapes for applauding crowds
then
away, low against
a
dull cartouche of sun.
In hard rain, we kissed and spoke of love.
But already we could see, from the seam
at
the sky’s edge, gulls big as dogs
hauling
tomorrow towards this spit of land.
In
the hard wet of the undercliff,
we
touched a creature
dead
before the earth had cooled, a resin-seal
of
memory, of memories revealed
between
the knowing and the known, shadows,
faint,
their faint impress, on pages
in
the killing zone.
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