Did you know there's a bay on the Greenland coast
called the Inlet of Tears?
I think of that place sometimes, imagine what
sorrowful icy event gave rise to such a name
rooting some nondescript spot into the spreading tree
of our hopes, history, genealogy, fear
the godlike cyclone of a finger on a map
wreaking forgetfulness as it passes
and, as it pauses,
the destruction of care

Some names are like silk aren't they
like the French Indochine you could wrap yourself in that sound
or drift upon the Sea of Clouds
or the Zen emptiness of one thing in one house
of the Sea of Tranquility
the adept understanding how the buzzing of the fly
gives stillness a place to run to
and what the caress of a lover's hand
cares for

The tiny chances of words their hypersensitive die
like a lost 's', or one gained 's'
tell you precisely where you are
a Smooth Guide to passing, an OS map on a finegrained scale
making something so personal, a haphazard fête shaped like an index
the signature of your being evoked
as scents of lavender crossed with rotting meat in a nearby bin
or seasalt mixed in with appleblossom and creosote
or Berber greens melting to Nullabor reds and pinks
watermarked zincs tacked onto snap frosts
or the news of sudden death in cars
hazarding silence entirely

Then 'kiss' is a location and 'vermeil', 'kiss' and 'touch' and 'kiss' again
a china bowl, milk in a saucer, a fluttering semaphore,
and each succulent phoneme
is an echolocation of a place itself
and the carcase–rip in the air
of a beautiful poem
a way of losing ground, or finding it
like new lovers, or the newly dying,
or those who survived to christen that inclement bay
the Inlet of Tears
the intimate chart of one moment
shaped like a world decision —
the real fairy-story
of making your mind up

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.