In another time, in another place

we drove along the coast

the headlights picking out

ancient trees like druids

in the night speed

with Astral Weeks* swelling inside

the car, inside my ribs

the music led us with flute and strings

into the thrilling dark –

I can’t remember a single word

he may have uttered that week,

but I recall the scent of mornings

baking bread from scratch

with the warm yeast of a holiday let

and our skin, getting caught in brambles

that scratched my ankles to blood,

blood bedded into the hedgerows

woven through the lane

down to the sea where my uncertain steps

over the dark, wet rocks, like sad lyrics

echoed the brief fragility of it all,

and I lied about his words,

I do remember something said

about bicycles and spoons,

maybe slipstreams.

*Astral Weeks, a song by Van Morrison

The walking fish

The girl with the saggy socks gathering around her ankles and a billowing red linen
dress, walked her fish on the end of a long string. The fish stayed in the ash grey sea
and the girl, on the flat sands of the beach. The string did not garrote the fish, or
dishevel his silver-green scales, it stayed loose around his neck, so when he’d had
enough of the girl and the walk, of watching her dark hair flying up in the salty
breeze, he just slipped out of the string and swam away behind a rock then out to
smoky waters.