Surface

Surface

When rising for air
it’s always you who’s waiting there –
matted and salt-beaded on a

blancmange sea, undulating
yet real like a
radio wave. And always in

the same place, too:
orientated beneath a timeless
strawberry-blonde sky,

in flotsamless blue.
(Telephone calls keep me under;
disputes with the neighbours

and sordid street entertainers...)
But in the surfacing moments it’s still you:
dimming softly now beneath a dunking sun;

each revisit the budgie-beep
of a smoke alarm,
during sleep

running lower on battery.
Soon you’ll die –
guillotined beneath

the horizon's knife
and someone else will occupy

that surface

above my life.