Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 41: 2013

Adam Stewart — Windows

page 66

Adam Stewart

Windows

The beach was a red window
to look out on
or into.

(i)

We didn’t find a pod of orcas, beached
but a clever pile of dead fish, with windows
for eyes

that saw brainless eternity in
their own little
   puddles of sunset

everything beneath
the gills torn away, showing red

where the nerves had connected.

(ii)

Under the waves, a silent red
wind
      blew, other

and moved the world beneath
the long arms of kelp and seagrass.
    We saw windows in
the red rock pools, partly reflecting the sunsets

page 67 partly displaying the fish, dead in

their sunny and
human way.

(iii)

A mist blew in
with filmic certainty, thick
         and red.

The meddling sunset
stole the cloud away from the beach

back to the little township, where it sat beneath
the tithe of hills licking the windows

of our little flat above the butcher’s shop, of the empty
schoolyard, and the abandoned church, and the
                       supermarket and the
                       bottleshop, and the café, and the
                       Chinese takeaway.

(iv)

On the rocks we stood and looked through eyes
not our own
connected
by the way

the abandoned
fish-heads gleamed and

washed in
time emptied.