The Distorted Sky: Part 1

 

The Distorted Sky: Part 1

 

My name is not important, I watched it drown years ago. 

It was swallowed like a breadcrumb by the ravenous waves 

and sank down to the sea floor, fading as memories do. 

Since then I have been nameless in my needle-shaped house.

 

~ ~ ~

 

In a past life I was a trawlerman based in Cuttlefish Cove. 

I was a carpenter too, and scientist of sorts. 

Pinned to the beams of my shack - 

which I had built for myself - 

were the charts I had made of the stars in the sky. 

By day I would catch fish 

and by night the galaxies, 

as they twinkled in the dark like a tapestry of spoons. 

I could see the world spinning and I watched it for years 

from my lunchbox-sized window at the edge of the land. 

 

My company back then was my oldest friend, Moat: 

a four legged wiseman with a taste for fresh fish. 

With his scruffy brown back at the height of my knee, 

each morning he would lead us to the sand-covered shore, 

being careful not to sniff his way over the edge 

to a life with the seaweed and the cold and the rocks. 

Morning through night he would pant at my side 

as I whistled him tunes of the wide open ocean.

I loved a young lady, her eyes like the mornin’  

A fisherman and his friend on the hill by the water. 

 

Down in the cove dwelt a miniature village, 

which clung to the shoreline, resolute as a limpet. 

The people of the town - 

perhaps one hundred in number - 

were as distant to me as anybody could be. 

With their drinking and their laughing 

and their dancing and their streetlamps, 

they would revel in things I found no pleasure in, 

and on Friday evenings, when the week’s work was done, 

they would light up the cliffs with the noise of their song. 

The sky would distort, 

as I looked from my window, 

from the light beams which shone from the full, rowdy pub. 

The stars became faint, almost fading completely

and the wind would divulge all of their tuneless jaunts. 

So on evenings like this I would put down my work

and sit on the grass overlooking the “fun”; 

tutting to Moat my eternal frustrations 

with the ale and noise and light and need. 

We needed nothing, us lonely companions, 

except then to rest for the next day’s adventure.

 

And adventure we did, as a daily regime: 

not one day was spent resting, 

no matter the season or sky. 

On the bright days we woke with the shimmering sunrise

and returned as the disc took its bath in the deep, 

bringing with us fresh fish from our seafaring exploits 

and water from the spring to boil for our tea. 

In the hours between we would stuff our time fully, 

climbing through the wrinkles on the escarpment’s old face,

searching for herbs to cook with our haddock and grains;

our footsteps would sound from the cavernous walls.

All the while our eyes keenly spied on the tide 

and we’d scurry to our vessel when it was wise to cast off. 

Old Philly we called her on account of her strength 

and the age of her wood, which looked like fossilised rope. 

She would carry us out through the monstrous swell 

to the calm of the sea, where we would launch down our net 

to the ocean’s green depths, for our silver-finned friends

who would hug the ropes tightly in their brave sacrifice. 

The hours we spent laying with the sun on our cheeks

in those far removed lulls, I shall never forget: 

the taste of the salt in my whiskers, laid sleeping - 

sundried minerals of our nautical life. 

 

~ ~ ~

 

Years passed through us, in our lives set apart

from the bustle of the folks with electrical lines.

We rocked and we hid - Moat, myself and Old Philly - 

far removed from the shrieks of the sanitised world.

No tins, no cars, no phones and no leaders

to pull from our view the sea, the earth and the skies.