METTLE FATIGUE

 

SO FAR UNDER

SO FAR UNDER

So far under I can't swim back to the surface.

Was I ever up there? Stark in the sunshine?

Shifting ponder mouths me down, floors me.

Somewhere Moon is plucking up tides,

Distorting the equator,

Puckering cliffs,

Frothing rock-pools with crisps of dead kelp.

My ribs ache from the kiss of a flame-tongued chimera,

Thump of pantechnicon push in the seething dark

Breaking me utterly, no tracks to trace retreat.

I should be psalming howls and how longs

Yet I banter and jive from that place called normal

Bobbing my head with quotidian nods

Catching crabs in the slipstream undertow

Sucking me down askance

So cushioned and carried

You need never know.