Alys Conran

Three Poems

Seam

We’re drawn to the edges of it
as if you could hold them,
the lapping edges, and stretch it out
between the anorak people
stamping here, and the bare ones
on the other side, in a bright place
hardly imaginable, where bathers
are all laid back and bare. We stand
at the edges and just above the surface,
consider walking down. Into it.
Into it. Where the things
are so life sized they make a speck
of this diver, like a spaceman
in his breathing equipment,
looking for something small.
Small enough to spear. Wide eyes
with the colour of depth, like a baby
when he surfaces. The world
fills lungs to bursting, and, limited,
sends him back in, past the edges
to shudder again. How cold it is.
 

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