The cuttlefish bone is deceitful. Not quite
like an iceberg and its tip, more like an atom
and its electron. There is a deadly serious
point to all this. I haven’t come down to the beach
just to sharpen my beak. You’re not a Piscean.
I can’t fathom why. My penny jaw dropped
into the fathomless – ridiculous – depths
and was washed stranded up white on the sea
sieve of stone. I am standing on a masoned ledge,
a created thing. An unforged gull carries
a pigeon’s off-white egg (the colour of cooked
albumen – we are prone to discoveries, moments
of discovery) in its beak. I have left behind
the forensic scalpel – the wind here is a soft
sphere (think of The Prisoner). What is all this
about? Your way with words, the truth in them
(I’ve never lived by the sea, so I had to come
and find out): what turned out to be delicate
abstractions and downright lies, like the sea
smelling of sea when it really doesn’t smell
of fucking sea, it smells of coffee beans, if anything,
or petrol fumes, or the station café where I write,
sabotaging a lineless notebook, a poltergeist.
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