| Author | Message | ||
| M
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3864 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention North Sea, Force Six Vienna (Carole Barley) The last of the Geminids fall somewhere over the North Sea. I rail-hang, smalling into gone as each trough makes horse-skin of my vessel, shuddering off waves that slap bang her seventies steel. The radio said that snow is forecast. In the Moonlight Lounge a dapper man leaves his baby grand to ask the barman for another whiskey and coke; His piano plays on, ghost fingers press keys in an intricate dance. A couple twirl, mouth the words to New York State of Mind. Goats cheese and red onions; cold cuts of rarer steak than is allowed in England lie on marble slabs as Indonesian waiters smile and look small in their white uniforms. Nothing is too much trouble here. Triple screws make whilrlpools to be lost in a blackness flavoured with frost. The moon is tinged with green, her reflection is fragmented, cubist light dismantled in the planes and angles of heave, of lee of wave. Passengers falter in corridoors, read step by step instructions on how to knot lifejackets. There is no worry in my life, I smile at their concern as the sea boils and throws spray at the letters of my grand charger's name. I am concerned only in translating the scent of the air, appraising the transient patterns of foam. What lies ahead is a shore of industrial grey, cheap wine and a language that jarrs my ears. I am travelling hopefully on a squid ink sea, Cold and enraged with the beauty of a storm. Belly down in the top bunk, my fingers twitch curtains, faint starboard lights pass and are gone. I dream, rocked and swooned with the wind curving the sails of a light lateen, some satin smile in gentler climes twist in the backwash of my stately vessel, become mist. |
