Seven drowned in thirty years,
they were called the cursed family
by the Telegraph,
achieved a brief and bitter kind of fame
in their ends.
All went the same way,
drowned differently;
how the last ones
must have dreaded the sea
the green foaming sterile rivers,
the deathly blue of the lake
and its slippery shore,
the mossy canal
by the lane near the pub.
I'd move inland,
but you can drown in a bucket
or a bath, open your mouth
and water pours in naturally,
as water fills in spaces.
Perhaps being undrowned is stranger,
staying afloat is a temporary art.
Or accept the curse; when a sailor fell
into the Danube his superstitious fellows
called from above, 'Don't struggle, it's God's will'.
But we do. We kick our legs and flail,
push our head above the edge to see.
We hold our breath, deny the obvious:
that we are marked, that such liquid stuff
cannot be resisted.
The sites have all shrunk now, of course,
in the diminution of reality
that time brings on;
it was more real then, you know,
the sun brighter, the sand more yellow.
Only the boxthorns are sharp as ever,
their tangled, rambling pathways
still lead in burrowing avenues,
secretly, to the sea
and broken bathing-boxes,
the warm sand-smell of urine,
tea-tree leaves sprinkled like confetti.
Here, at dusk, through patterned cotton curtains
that once were a bedspread,
yellow lights appear in instant avenues.
Then, the first drops of the threatened cool change
patter on canvas annexes,
slap against plastic playthings,
late boys lugging stumps and bats
to warm, one room units on wheels,
laminex tables, bunks, the smell of flathead frying,
scrabble sets, some missing 'x's.
It is a close and crowded evening,
an unremarkable January change
that would be gone by morning,
though the family on site 64,
with the station wagon
and the white dinghy
upside down against the rain
cocooning a salty darkness
that already knows some secrets,
has only two more summers left together,
and will never be more complete.
for Iris
She recognises your children rarely now,
but sometimes she'll surprise you,
speak for whole vivid moments on end
without the present
and what's become of us all;
making sense.
You wonder when she'll forget you
and what will be left at the end
and you find yourself
divorcing yourself in anticipation
Fragments of song remain,
as fragile things like pottery
will sometimes be unearthed,
music, and the overwhelming desire
to walk and walk, forever if she could,
some private map of the streets of her marriage,
tapping her hand lightly
to an invisible tune
or frowning slightly at some misbehaviour,
as she might have done when your mother.
You find yourself wondering,
should you map these journeys or these tunes,
as if such patterns could help.
In such moments together
you long to make contact,
can almost sense its closeness,
how some scent or tune might bring it all back
and her face would come alive with its own shape,
and her voice would spring alive with its old desire
to please, saying, 'hello, where have I been?'
'have I been away?', 'what am I doing here?'
and, 'why are you crying?'