Transmission

Fingers of rain slant into the bay, sheet metal slicing dove-back water,

charted water, silt-stream water, water that stings and rinses,

cutting itself from above, from afar, water with telegraph veins

that pulse and buck, intelligent, informed, dumb, lunatic.

A mass movement, a wave if you like, a wave a wave

drowning itself from above, below, absorbing itself

into itself. It has no self. It is a martyr to itself.

It has no self, no heaven or hell, it is a body, it has a body,

a mass, a weight. It carries and lifts, sucks and breathes.

It has no breath. It eats it`s own fingers, turns them salt, turns

wine to water, grinds it`s teeth, it has no teeth, grinds stone to powder,

men to chowder, chowder to steam, mist to rain again and again

the rise and fall, the groaning motion sickness of it all.

I stand on the strand as rain chops in from the West, the East,

who knows, feet eaten, the crust of plastic spat from craft

a noose the water slips, the beach a stage for many a crude performance,

whispers and sighs, alarms conveyed in code, while out there

warships nudge, curtains dissolve, and water transmits

what it doesn`t know it knows it doesn`t know,

how it connects nothing with nothing and everything

licks itself with no tongue to speak of, grey and humble,

dim and terrible, without knowing the sting and rinse,

the restless edge where empiricisms break like bands of froth.

Sandra Tappenden
Pic Nick Victor