Category: poetry

my father was a fisherman, and you know
what that means. no, i do not mean fish
for a meal three times a day all week round,
only that he was never there. and when he was,
he hardly sobered up. i was ten when i first
sneaked into a tavern to bring him home.
that night, i was awakened by his screams,
the crash of chairs hitting the walls,
and my mother’s crying. so it is puzzling
that seeing you on the beach that afternoon
made me remember this very memory.
is this why i did not dare ask you
for your name?

i fart. yes, i do. but why would i mention this?
because nobody does. it is one of those things
covered in embarrassed silence, as if we were
some kind of wraiths, devoid of physicality.
the problem is that we talk about our visit
to a fashionable restaurant with a touch of pride,
discussing the menu down to the last detail,
but a sign of panic appears in our eyes
at the very sound of the word loo.

i still have a few books to read,
a few works to see,
and a few miles to walk.
there are still things
i have not thought about,
the words i left aside
to be used somewhere else,
and unfulfilled little hopes.
and there you are,
who i have never met,
or noticed at the right time.
and here i am, writing
about all this as if i had
unlimited time.

if you asked me what i wanted for breakfast,
i would say a rou an’ a cuppa tea,
just like your father used to be (i have heard
that rowies taste best with strawberry jam).
later, we would go for a walk, answering nae bad
to the neighbour’s ay ay fit like e day?
and on the way to the harbour, you would tell me
how that day you tracked a dolphin, spotted
near the entrance channel, while after school
you waited for the return of the trawler.

she appeared out of nowhere in front of my eyes.
i watched in disbelief as she, wrapped in a bath towel,
vigorously walked down the stone ramp to the beach.
young, full of life, she seemed completely unaffected
by the cold of mid-november, when i stood leaning
against the railing at the end of the promenade,
tucked into my thick winter jacket and a woollen cap.

having reached the damp sand, she dropped the towel
with an unforced naturalness, as if carved by the hand
of michelangelo, and walked calmly into the water,
something i would not be surprised at by the adriatic sea
in the middle of summer but not by the north sea
in late autumn. and as i admired her amid the waves,
i mourned the moment she would eventually disappear

between the stone walls of fittie.

when confronted with the quotidian predicament
of a finely forced awakening while still half asleep,
i blindly hit the space next to my bed, attempting
to deliver the knockout blow to an annoyance
made of shoddy plastic in a bland sea blue
(i do not mind the colour, and neither does time).
sometimes i win this encounter, but usually
all i manage to do is fall off onto the cold floor.
and this is where my daily dose of spontaneity
ends.

it all started when, beyond
the essential yes and no,
you learned the word perhaps.
and although over time
you have lessened the habit
of overusing the conditional
mood in favour of the indicative,
long words, like long shadows,
still say little about the sunset
of yours.

if you had asked me if i ever spoke
in country lyrics, i would have denied it,
proudly pointing to the legacy of pindar
and keats. but deep down, i know
that i envy your little week;
your sorrows and delights;
your passions and your spites;
your glory and your shame;
and that there is hardly anything
i could say that you do not already know.
but guessing your day from the creak
of the upstairs floor, all i can muster
is the rustle of a page as it flips.

what is your name?
and why do i get the feeling
that you are hiding it in the colour
of your lipstick that distracts others
from the shadow in your gaze
as you face the rain without an umbrella,
letting the first drop roll down your cheek
already streaked with one?