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The South Atlantic Quarterly 100.1 (2001) 145-154



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Ocean

Matthew Francis


Margin

You’re nearly there at last. The ocean is in the air,
although you can’t see it yet. The sheep-grazed contours
now have an edge to them, as if the next field
might drop away into nothing. You’ve stared

at the distance so long it dissolves
into the swimming of your eyes,
a blue tremble. Is it you

or is that a fault-line
on the horizon,

a second sky?


People who live close to the sea get shrivelled by it.
They cultivate nets, parched ropes and grey splintered wood,
essences of tar, seaweed and bird-droppings,
orange plastic and blistering front doors.

This is the dry land the tide guzzles
that even the shivery rain
can never reconstitute. [End Page 145]
Gulls like detached waves are
its emblem, doodled

in the margin.

They woke you this morning regurgitating their cries
and you went for a walk unravelling yourself
till you finally arrived at a loose end.
Only the sea knew where it was going.

This evening the girls are all dressed up,
glitter on the cobbles, the dark
slipping from their bare shoulders.

Prom night. They huddle near
its unseen body

breathing away.

So you got here, then. You’re staying in a B and B
with sea view. You’ve eaten fish and chips on the beach
and had your fortune told: she saw a journey—
and you’d thought this was the end of the road.


A long way. Not in a boat. Not France,
much deeper. Are you getting warm?
You’ll be colder soon. And dark.

Not death. More like going
back where you came from

and don’t belong.

Shallows

First on the beach. Not even a jogger about yet.
The sand is touched with red light and chills your ankles
as you stagger from leg to leg undressing.
You leave your clothes for it to settle in,

and cross the strand with its lugworm casts
and plazas of sculpted ripples
to a sea turning over [End Page 146]
in its sleep. Last night’s blue
is still here, waiting,

reaching for you.

At first it’s all fizz and you have to step in it twice
because it keeps going back on you: touch and go,
but then it makes friends. You could get used to this—
or rather the shallows have warmed to you.

The test is when it reaches your leg
or, worse, your groin. Or when it burns
a purple line round your waist.

When it grabs your shoulders.
When you duck under

and your heart stops.

It’s blue and it’s up and it’s salty and it’s down and
it’s green and it’s in your mouth and it’s up and it’s
blue and it’s in your eyes and you can’t see and
it’s up your nostrils and you can’t breathe and

it’s an atmosphere you’re standing on
and a solid you’re seeing through
and a colour you’re breathing.

You stand on the bottom.
You see blue and green.

You breathe water.

It isn’t enough to have your sea-legs. You will need
sea-eyes to open the dark, sea-lungs to sponge up
oxygen, and a sea-skin to protect you
in the cold crushing place you’re heading for.

Set out for the deep, past the headland
where the rocks grip leather ribbons
of kelp. Just above your head

the air is gatecrashing.
The tide’s coming in

as you go out. [End Page 147]

Shelf

You may be out of your depth, but not out of the world.
This is where most of it is. In the blue sunshine,
in the green fogs of plant bits, the water winds
that ripple the sand here too, you’re walking

still close to home. It’s like the rockpool
of your dreams, where anemones
don’t turn out to be weeds, crabs

can still move, and there are
fumbling galaxies

of five-armed...

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