I try to revive a blue whale

I wrote about whales last week in “Ulterior Motives.” It’s odd then that this time last year I posted “In the ocean one night,” a poem about whales that I had transcribed directly from a dream. Yes, I kid you not. This was one of my genuine, vivid sleep-time dreams. The poem inspired the title

Ulterior motives

It was very suspicious the way that whale rolled over and opened its mouth for tips, then set fireworks to the water gods from its blowhole. — Whales have featured in my poetry before. Like sluice gates and bears, whales prefigure as a childhood fascination. In my first or second year of school, we learnt

The call home

The tides of tomorrow and tomorrow and the next tomorrow sweep into crevices of shored shells. The waves nudge these hollows of yesterday’s habitat into the barrels of tomorrow, tomorrow and the next tomorrow. There the shored shells break with tomorrow, tomorrow and another tomorrow dashed to granules that lip the tideline. Salted foam seeps

In the ocean one night

I try to revive a blue whale with raw eggs from plastic bowls in different colours laid out in a wooden fishing boat. To do this you must put two or three eggs together in each bowl, watch their yolks lilt to the tide, then pour them through the whale’s sieve-like mouth. — This poem

Afloat

Onto my raft of plaits I shall step, with dreams of Alsation-men. — This short poem dates from the last quarter of 2013 when I did indeed have a dream about a raft of plaits and Alsation-men. Perhaps it was a subconscious mash-up of my plaited rag rug  (A craft project that’s still incomplete!) and