Will Eaves
If I were to write down a list
of everything I miss I’d miss
the most important thing,
an irregular pearl. Not gifts –
books on corvids, Wild Lone,
‘Ballad of Gordon, Alpha Cock,
who clawed to death a fox
and Bedlington terrier’ – or this
What’s missing from this floor?
The furniture, but also the reason
The Captain’s keen to explore, go deeper,
Take core samples, measure astronomical tilt.
He says the clues are down there and the truth;
Our forebears, numerously well-preserved,
Not since I was four or five at most
and in the first of many striped tee-shirts
have I been this close to the flavour of safety.
I’m walking into town again, the child of hills.
You bought me fish and chips for lunch, my own
adult portion because I asked for it, in Evans’s
tiled restaurant, the Alhambra of takeaways.