Meridian Stalker Poem by Raymond Crump

Wednesday, and the tide of the week turns to ebb
On the morrow. A prospect of mudflats will be exposed,
The longitude of another listless weekend where, wader-like
You pick among pebbles, turning stones to feed on the helpless,
Frantic shrimps and worms of sand-cast fragment memory.

No sea-shell will surf a Venus onto such a desolate beach.
The saving latitude you find in open books of poetry
Will drift you out of reach of the empty littoral, til, lost to sight,
You drown in sleep, to surface in some orchard of the stars and fall,
With that hard, bright fruit of light, to earth, feinting a broken wing.

Could you sing, a peevish lament would issue; peckish notes,
To shrill at the interloper's looming shade, an overcoat turning
In the wind, boot splashing rude gouts of mud on the satin
Of that sun-wet shore, the thread of your sharp, intuitive eye
Snared on the net-hook of his wild, predatory gaze.



















14/08/2010