Will Eaves
If I were to write down a list
of everything I miss I’d miss
the most important thing,
an irregular pearl. Not gifts –
books on corvids, Wild Lone,
‘Ballad of Gordon, Alpha Cock,
who clawed to death a fox
and Bedlington terrier’ – or this
The Captain’s keen to explore, go deeper,
Take core samples, measure astronomical tilt.
He says the clues are down there and the truth;
Our forebears, numerously well-preserved,
Not since I was four or five at most
and in the first of many striped tee-shirts
have I been this close to the flavour of safety.
I’m walking into town again, the child of hills.
You bought me fish and chips for lunch, my own
adult portion because I asked for it, in Evans’s
tiled restaurant, the Alhambra of takeaways.