Barry Island, with Dante and Ducks

In the here-and the anywhere-after

of the funfair, they’re

bobbing, they’re jostling,

as snub-nosed and up-for-it

as ocean-going tugs:

 

yolk-yellow shallow-draughted

plastic ducks. Poor

souls. Or not whole souls but

appetites; they nudge

 

in a slow spin, the slew

of the circular stream – say it:

Dante, with cheerier music –

 

while glum baffled kids stare in,

wanting, certainly wanting,

 

uncertainly sure just what.

 

But we’ll give it a whirl,

a quid a go,

 

with bamboo fishing sticks.

They’re surprisingly coy,

these ducks; their cup-hooks

 

begging like the Brahmacharya’s śikhā,

his god-handle tuft

(just one hair is enough,

one flick, to winch us up

 

out of the world of illusion)

 

for the click

with a copper curtain ring

on a chain, the quiver-tip

of her six-year-old’s slim concentration

 

(and grandfather helping —

is it helping that I do?)

They bump, spin, mutely

dodgem, but yes,

 

between us, one’s hooked.

She comes home

with a neon-green flubbery monkey,

 

already with a look of Was

that it? We paid over the odds,

 

but who said they were even,

 

or even the point?

 

The point

 

is that we buckled to it, me

with stiff knees, kneeling almost,

at her side, till we met

 

at the point of pure

attention,

the vanishing point,

a kind of ever-after

 

in the here and Thursday,

with the smell of burgers

beach tar, spindrift pink

of candyfloss, a bit

of grace, a bit of luck.

 


 

Limited Edition

There, you caught it: the wind, that

something which is nothing

but its moving and

the ways the world is swayed around it.

 

You cut its shape on the page. And

water with its endless once-for-all

equivocations. And fire

in black and white, that least biddable

 

beast, which won’t be called to hand

or heel.            We sat side

by side and signed and signed

the limited edition, till we both, as one

 

man, burst out laughing: I’ve forgotten

how to! – I know, I’ll do your

name, you do mine!

There, never closer to the heart

 

of what made us both makers –

for a moment, almost no

distinction between us, the fire, the water

 

or the wind, which lifts now, Peter. On we go.

 

For Peter Reddick

– 28.09.10 

Dearest reader! Our newsletter!

Sign up to our newsletter for the latest content, freebies, news and competition updates, right to your inbox. From the oldest literary periodical in the UK.

You can unsubscribe any time by clicking the link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or directly on info@thelondonmagazine.org. Find our privacy policies and terms of use at the bottom of our website.
SUBSCRIBE