Diorama

Sheets of water laminate the windows

as if to reverse

the myth of glass,

but my gaze keeps slipping

to the ghosts which drift behind me,

swaying in a Finnish tango

to the ship’s pitch and yaw,

borrowed eyes seeing

some earlier draft of things,

lost in a cold, particulate light.

Is this the drowning which was meant?

My tilt-shift vision

of Prospero’s storm:

cellophane sea and scattered

doll-like bodies, their tiny faces

far too clear.

A wave breaks over us like a stage curtain,

and it is last night on the M56,

heading west, somewhere near Chester,

the fog lights catching great dark shoals

of rain, algorithmic complexity

that flexes

and envelops us,

so it seems we barely move at all.

The illusion holds until

a single truck tyre appears,

a sudden coalescence of storm and tar

shuddering down the motorway

to loom as close

and still

as midwinter dawn.

It completes a turn in the air

with slow brute grace,

then passes,

catseyes like bouquets

thrown into the night behind us.

And now, deep in the wilds of the Irish Sea,

the new year is sleeping within

cyclizine dreams,

and I am reminded of yesterday’s wonder:

a chorus of whispers painted on

the imprimatura of your skin;

delicate cave magic revealed

by the flickering torch

of a heartbeat.

Over the bow

I can see the evening’s

last blue twilight,

pressed between

stormclouds like a flower,

holding for an instant

it trembles

and

vanishes.