Word Wrapping

I started my day in Zurich. Clown foot thumping, the underscore to my iPod's roller coaster of ballads, rock anthems and aching strings. Past Baur's early huddle of breakfasters, along familiar, shabby paths I've swept, and washed, before and toward the glass placid lake. In the summer, boats cram the moorings in uniform blue oilskins, impatient for evening's breezy dance of jibe and tack. Right, past the heady scents of the glass house and then a sudden left, and a pause by the monument. Its triumphant exuberance, familiar, comforting and unsettling all at once. Drawing deep breath's of lake cooled air, I turn for home.

Showered and suited, I decline the offer of an air conditioned taxi and opt for the tram. Caught off guard by summer's swelter, I practice stillness, letting tiny breezes crawl over me like spiders. At the crossing, I yield to a passing shoal of children, in singing, non matched, pairs. Bright and colourful, they remind me of the line of dark suited men at the airport yesterday and an uneasy anger begins to build somewhere deep inside.

For weeks now, trying to wrap a thought in words has been like trying to wrap a bicycle in wet newspaper. Lines torn in the breeze as soon as they form. By pure chance I opened Seamus Heaney's "Field Work" and found The Otter and now, in darkening Kensington, a pattern begins to form, that might yet enfold a thought.

In the meantime......

The Otter

When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Re-tilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones