The atom of sleep was there (small cupping hand) drool and sheep
a lightheavyweight dream (champion of the world) squaring (the bell)
The house by the sea (remote) I always carry with me
a pocket of that sand (soul dust) in this dry room
I wake suddenly sometimes imagining
a sound of barbarian waves

Heidegger and Being (student days) and the small copying hand
of God Sein und Zeit in the baywindow light
a restless flock of H2O corralled (no sleep) in a folded memory
and The House by the Sea, entitled now,
the volume of a story (remote) that I
belong to (and keep meaning to read,
but just never find the time somehow…)

Gulls in a maze of air (our maze) and this mind
the cut–caress of our mouths (you
with sand in your shoes) I (it slips away)
and the troubled memories we made of each other
and of each night of that stay
like throwing salt into fire
On very still nights, they say, you can hear (relate)
the bell being tolled in the drowned church tower

Locke, Hume, Berkeley, vinegar-coloured paperbacks (gulls) soared
into the vanishing point (the air of words) a first-year universe
and sex the metaphor (the creamy links) sex
the plain flag (and) sex just sex
I threw away the sea keys, threw them further away
into you (relater) the small rowing boats bobbing in the estuary
with their locksmith wakes while you (in the house
by the sea) sat barefoot in the windowseat and the way you looked
sent me my loneliness (at last) first class

Shells feathers and bones (the sea typewriter) full stops and colons
(taps out its story) extinctions and mutations
(the eyeright words) the house
by the sea (Memory) and the eyesight sky (our sky)
I dreamed of Heidegger on the beach saying
'Man is the Shepherd of Being: drive Being this way — this way —
this way'… (towards me)
I woke still in love (emotive) with my slaughterhouse name
learning to live in pieces, and with certain lines dead-ends

By then I knew I was (champion) only in name
sole dust in a breezier nature (the blow)
Remote scissor–clock experiments and product of the scissor–clock
I sat on the edge of the bath where you lay
the water galumphing when you moved (?) the paper
chain of waterbeads (I was strung out) and we seemed
to be growing closer and closer (tidal bronze)
though to what (sun-motes) I could not say

Paperweight days go by (like books being boxed) out here
in woollyback country
It is a strange place but I (told bell) have grown attached to it
the small bathing shacks of bright (and faded) primary colours
(like a) stamp collection on the sand of these eyes
(lick a) different one (you see now) the album fallen open, empty
and the sudden crouch of your nerves at twilight
a hare scenting the breeze
holding very close (remote) the one you love
and feeling, for a moment, it — the

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Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.