When that not exactly loneliness
so much as aloneness
seeps into a rehearsal
and it’s not the productive gloom
but the other one
then the first thing is to drown it
in noise until the roof beams rattle
and if that doesn’t work
and it comes back doubled
by a fear that everything good
we’ve ever done, even Primavera,
even Theresa’s perfect speaker stack dive
onto hands as soft as water
was set to a click track bleak
and bare within us
well then we simply slide aside
the big door, pad out barefoot
across the warm wide road, a city
concussed with heat, over the sand
and into the steep Pacific,
two steps and away, through breakers,
surfers, our heads aloft
on each scrolled wave,
out until the deeper current
tugs our shoulders, our hips,
wants us in the shipping lanes,
wants our bodies bloated and blue
six hundred miles south
until, to summarise, the sea
aligns with our worst selves
and then we swim in,
suddenly hungry,
carried by the taste
of floating face down
in Laguna Ojo de Liebre.
Joe Dunthorne
poemsinwhich.wordpress.com 