Ten Years

Time passes like a fish swimming towards its own flavour
Cliff not under your feet    Years
Emptier than a word    Sea wall
Sharp nipples suckling the storm
Rocks are not there    You are turned like a brass screw and rust
In the armpits of sparkling waves    Epitaph of a sunken ship
A name swathed in fish scales
Sloughs off fleshy curves    Art of cloistering jellyfish

This blank expanse called water    Turns sweet
Is called old    Sunlight with the pull of a magnet
Ten summers in your lungs
Trims back    The black water level in a haemorrhaging garden
Reflections in the harbour dance upside down
Trying to remember    A nature like yours someone had left behind
Gulping down a glass of sour self-brewed beer in the kitchen
Like pouring it into the sink    The graduate skeleton spits out
another zero