A smouldering grid on a cypress stand
Treatise on light
Vessels shaped by the light they hold
are given a name
gazelle kidneys Titian
to hold the light, to keep it still long enough
to give us what we have to hold to
carburettor geranium quartz
then Thomas Young opens a window
onto a London morning two centuries ago
and things haven’t been the same since. He catches
the light that enters his room and splits it in two
revealing waves that spread out into the invisible
that cross one another forming a disturbance we call
sorrow history desire
now we know those rustling packets we call
God love time
are simply waves playing further out into what
we no longer have a name for
bringing what we have no name for
into the shallows of this world
breaking onto the platform
rolling along the street
waves eddy and collide
interfering with particles that constitute our life
growing stronger as they approach
fate despair memory
light bent in different ways
their tug draws us out and down
leaving us, if we’re lucky, no more than
perplexed, sensing that something
that lies outside names has passed
still draws us in its wake
but when a wave lifts us
the good days can be so simple:
a pizza shop empty
but for me, my wife, her mother and her friend
in knitted hats, unwinding scarves
and at another table, a group of joshing pensioners
glass sugar shakers on the plastic menus
catching pewter light
and the pier opposite, extending a runway
for rain announcing itself over the bay.
Shortlisted, Bridport Poetry Prize 2022