After the Drowning

P.G. Deaton

When he broke the
news of his own silence
he found himself swept up
upon a far lost shore
with all the crashing noise
of sea tides in his ears,
the water still wet and
gritted, trickling inside like
an insect, and the sea echoing
with possessive memory
like he had borne two
conch shells for ears.

Strange thing is, he felt
less scared, less disfigured
in himself, than before
the drowning.

Where he had arrived
he wasn’t quite certain
and the characters
of his world, he couldn’t yet
equate with his newfound freedom,
the books for their string
of words were somehow lost
in the depths, all he had left
was sea froth and clean
white pages, sharper than
sky.

Like hesitant raindrops
the words were slow to appear
at first, but then they
came in quick succession
and later without knowing
why, he knew the destiny
of his own drowning.

On waking fully the sea
lost significance, until on his
clothes and skin
like delicate scars
the dried white sea salt
left its only mark.

 

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Ben Vorlich

P.G. Deaton

Now air is free,
the mountains are cleared,
and stand in relief
on this tablecloth earth,
domed and heaped
rising like a mound
poured sugar has formed,
hardened and set, left out
in the cold, all year,
each season, hard crust
these mountains have –

the land moving back
in disbelief,
evaporate,
as though from
a wave that never arrives.

I wanted hallowed ground
where no one had trod, space,
a landed basin and a mountain
poured out of sky,

hour glass inversion, after
time, would that all life
could so settle.

These mountains stand clear,
to uplift;
to circulate
the girth of ground
the notion of your
freedom.

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Night Opening

(from Bristol, Leigh Woods)

P.G. Deaton

The tripping crepuscular – strung out
like the beaded night and small city
pinhead lights now turning on down
in the gorge, peppered like golden silk,

tying up the valley in a neck scarf,
glinting, that may have made its way
from India. And all the while from nowhere,
night, growing like the secret prying

of a muscle shell, turn and raised, from
a blade, the mixed blue hues dipping back
to the knuckle of the join, and this grouping of
steadfast trees down and lost
like the whole world is the
base of a tulip petal rich in colour
but now heading for a blackening.

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