Stone-Caster

Much better to cast them at the sea than at other people (or representations of people, good evil, etc.); the sea is appreciative and emits a little plashy noise each time, similar to the sound of one hand clapping.

On our second recent visit to Bray beach we anticipated his desire to run into the "grey sweet mother" (or, if you like, "snotgreen scrotumtightening") and divested him beforehand. Sure enough, he sprinted in and out a few times. No swimming though. Come to think of it this may be an appropriate place for that poem, from my second collection THE SKY ROAD:

BEFORE AND AFTER

1

Watching sea and sky
darken and simplify,

I think of what's now in hand:
the stubby, white plastic wand

you drew from your handbag to show
(in its recessed, thumbnail window)

two, clear-blue lines,
one light, one darkly defined:

a skipped heartbeat, a stone
out of sight, over the known

peaceable old horizon
I had rested my eyes on.


*

Now he is sounded, swept
into webbings of light,

restless, more and less real,
metaphors on a roll,

none clearer than the top
of his skull: oval, a raindrop

let go, falling on course,
eye to eye with the Earth

dreaming up sun, moon, stars
in its hammock of waters.


2

Stroking his forehead, I found it
by accident, that soft spot
under the skin, where the young bone
knits... knits... knits...

His lopsided, premature smile
is a quiver of pain. He is all
there, solid, a touchstone
in touch, a part of the main.


3

This is how I find he has nosed
his spreading taproot down
into my days.
I come to
in my old pose, at a window,
lightly swaying from foot
to foot,
as if nursing more
than a paperback (his warm bulk);
surprised to find our rock-
abye rhythm --- the day itself,
gentled,
cradling my old head ---
even in prose.


He's far too big to be cradled thus now, wonderfully grown from his too-tiny, too-quiet beginning: a lanky, sturdy sapling, well able to bend with the breeze, indeed creating it half the time.