Inheritance - Lord of the Isles

Surely no one has let the cold jeg their knees

Quite happily

Lined up a ruler against the seam

Where the sky on a too-full stomach

Tucks itself into the sea

Only I see the water

Sugar-glazed to stillness

Like two taps with a spoon

Would split its lid in two

The wind that burls me

Does not feel second hand

It’s as true as a first-word

That repaints the front room it cuts through

Sounds stretched to an echo

So no one remembers how language used to land

The sand

Is out the packet new

Branded with my shoes

Maybe the sun is knackered too

Like each of us

Wrapped up in our work, and ourselves

Dreaming of being shelled by our backpacks

And swallowed by the beach

Maybe it’s a parent

Too tired to keep playing

That lies through their teeth

Because all pain is small change

In the cost of wonder

Rising somewhere else while we see it sleep

Returning its light

In the nick of time

So that not a grain is lost

Not a bloat of cloud burst

Not a wave out of place

I must be the first

Everything I have

Was given to me clean

Like the sky burns just to blush my face

I have held it up

Ungloved

Crushed seaweed beneath me

Breathed in the beach until I have a new set of lungs

But I have never wiped sunrise down my jumper

To get rid of fingerprints

I never took my shoes off as I came in