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