Ten

Unsleepily tired in these thousands of words,
I am not an essayist.

Would I were upbeat, hurtling from a promenade,
Waiting to leave behind me a ten-year-old's reckless footprints
In Dorset sand.
This opportunity, only and readily in dreams,
Is inspired by a strange-smelling photograph.
Any one of many relatives lifts the heaviness of the album,
Once a year
The lightness of the photograph,
In a hurry from the shelf,
And forwards what is really a poem into the hands of one who made me,
Who paid for the print.

Unsteadily, I don't remember this image.
But this is always going to happen.
I don't remember not being an image.

I'm not sure how much longer this can continue for.

If the world were globelessly flat,
Before Christ,
I would row out from an ocean-threatened city,
Pray to a mermaid,
And fall from the farthest explored salt water
Into a new nowhere.

When the tide retreats, I look and see a leather ball coming to a stop,
Spitting out gold crystals.