It’s been terribly blustery this weekend – the type of weather that tends to blow all ideas out of my mind and prevents me from focusing. It does, however, provide a good excuse to post a picture I took last spring of a wind flower – a wood anemone.
It was a runner-up in the Scottish International Poetry Competition and I remember feeling the need to reassure the audience at the award ceremony in Irvine, reminding them of the separation between narrator and poet.
Three sheets to the wind
From the high seas of the city,
in the wee small hours he’s washed,
jetsam on a spring-tide,
home to the suburbs.Down below, she hears him navigate
the heave and swell; his waves of anger break
on coffee-table rocks. He gybes and yaws,
keels into the telly, pitches, veers about and almost
runs aground against the bookcase.He climbs the rigging stairs, the banister
a rope between his hands.
On unfamiliar landlegs he tacks
the length of passageway, battling a head wind
that blows for him alone.At last he finds the opening in the reef;
he founders, lists to port, then beaches, belly up,
beside her.She listens to the ebb and flow
of breath and wonders what to do
with her drunken sailor.
don't confuse the narrator 