by Eileen
Berry
Moon, strobing the cold calm grey waters
of
a northern sea
shallow
corrugations of slow moving waves
turned
to denseness of pewter,
edged
like sand ridges on the shore
quicksands,
quicksilvered by this light, and as
restless
as the surface of the sea,
mercury,
pulling in boats and fishermen, and
once,
a long grey-metallic bullet of a submarine
that
went down on a calm night, its huge
bulk,
opaque shape, lumbering slowly towards
the
unknown mud-dark bottom,
dislodging
vast underclouds of fine silt,
surface
closing, impassible as polished lead.
The
seabank, mounded, rose dark above us, and
the
wooden stile shone, like worn stressed
silver-paper
in this cool clear light, as we
climbed
and stared across quicksilver sands
to
the cold steel blade of the sea at night,
dared
each other to go down the slope
to
the moonsilvered shore and take possession
of
the place, a serious place,
more
for lovers
than
for children and childrens' games.
First published in The Poetry Miscellany 1992. University of Tennessee Press.