Transmutation of the commonplace,
is it, straightforwardness as magic, making
those thrown-out, ugly-duckling shopping bags
turn sculptural, like snow-white swans at gaze?
Or cannily revealing zinc-gray chainlink
playground fences as the crochet network
they are; that streetlamp, a North Sea lighthouse,
which now comes on and paves the street with gold -
with light. It's still
our
street, and, as such, home.
TOM SLEIGH
Great Island
"Animula blandula vagula ... "
Out beyond the shadows of the headlands
it was all ocean I couldn't see beyond,
the harsh, head-clearing smell
of washed-up kelp and iodine .. .
Sea graveyard shifting, rolling;
the wind I leaned against testing
and reproving while sun
like a searchlight swept across the sand
and the clouds hung over me
like listening posts
attentive to the gravid
words of the dead:
"Friend and guest, companion
of my flesh , my own small soul
now drifting gently down
and down to that lightless place
