I'm Sorry I Was Five Minutes Late for Work This Morning.
(strictly, it was Friday, but hey) and cameras don't really hack it,
6am - I come awake to a splash outside the window, a
swimmer kicking into sudden startled movement.
Again - more resonant, now below me,
bubbles singing bell-like as they climb,
pattering up the steel, running rising from a blow
beneath the hull.
Pulling back the curtain, brass rings catch in dull, awkward,
unwoken precession.
Already hot, morning sun angles down between the boats,
yellow-bright,
its glow spent within the first few inches of brown-misted water,
firing self-lit ghosts of movement below the oiled mirror
of a cinema-blue sky.
Crescent moons unfurl and orbit in suspended space
below, resolving,
sky breaking, as the strong-finned shape breaches clear -
Forty pounds of solid bronze-cast bulk hangs amongst
ice-clear tendrils,
a country-house fountain sculpture, perfect-carved
repeated scales,
rills and tangled streams of clear water twist off,
as she crests, and turns,
slipping back through mirror sky and into sepia twilight.
More sun-shades manifest as fish;
threes twisting, fours leaping,
they chase amongst green-stranded weed-wrapped hulls
that hang within the half-light of the water.
Along the boat line, yells, as people stagger, half dressed,
part sleeping, onto decks,
the low grassed lake bank behind them,
in a sunlight of sudden, splashing fish.
A great grey wolfhound joins the commotion,
wiry muscle and fur, claws rattling on wood, chasing
from one mooring to another,
barking, protecting her people from the rising unknown
in the waters amongst us.
It is not yet breakfast,
and today is the day of the carp spawning.
6am - I come awake to a splash outside the window, a
swimmer kicking into sudden startled movement.
Again - more resonant, now below me,
bubbles singing bell-like as they climb,
pattering up the steel, running rising from a blow
beneath the hull.
Pulling back the curtain, brass rings catch in dull, awkward,
unwoken precession.
Already hot, morning sun angles down between the boats,
yellow-bright,
its glow spent within the first few inches of brown-misted water,
firing self-lit ghosts of movement below the oiled mirror
of a cinema-blue sky.
Crescent moons unfurl and orbit in suspended space
below, resolving,
sky breaking, as the strong-finned shape breaches clear -
Forty pounds of solid bronze-cast bulk hangs amongst
ice-clear tendrils,
a country-house fountain sculpture, perfect-carved
repeated scales,
rills and tangled streams of clear water twist off,
as she crests, and turns,
slipping back through mirror sky and into sepia twilight.
More sun-shades manifest as fish;
threes twisting, fours leaping,
they chase amongst green-stranded weed-wrapped hulls
that hang within the half-light of the water.
Along the boat line, yells, as people stagger, half dressed,
part sleeping, onto decks,
the low grassed lake bank behind them,
in a sunlight of sudden, splashing fish.
A great grey wolfhound joins the commotion,
wiry muscle and fur, claws rattling on wood, chasing
from one mooring to another,
barking, protecting her people from the rising unknown
in the waters amongst us.
It is not yet breakfast,
and today is the day of the carp spawning.