England


And while you dozed or looked away
it had gone, a fading answerphone
message, a drizzle-sound shrinking
beneath its mist plume, filibustered
debates in saloons bars after hours
dissolved to regulars' praise of ales
and the rain dripping through parachutes
of cloud to sink into the trumpet heads
of the parks' untended flowerbeds
from the thing that you thought you were
a fog-caped headland where your keel
can't make landfall and grounds
itself in the quarried sea-defences.
A man is quarrelling with himself
through thicknesses of cloth about nothing
unaware of falling glass, rising Beauforts.
The trumpet lilies rock on their stems.
They seem like someone just about to speak.
Out at sea the rocks have vanished
wrack swirls: above sea lice, sea slug
screaming yellow-eyed gulls wheel and dive.