AIRE
for ERICA DEARDEN
Not a big eagle, nor
a little tiny eagle:
one wing ruffled by the water
and the other swept the sky
its tail skimmed the sea
and its beak clattered on crags
the wind made her womb full
the sea makes her fat
water mother : air lass
extracts from the Kalevala
1 Colour
All winter as the beige hills behind my home sponge into bog, I hang on to that moment snorkling in calm clear sea when the bottom disappears into blue – suddenly you are flying upside down: look up and the silver surface ripples away like a bed of cloud, look down and there’s nothing but sky.
All through the grey months I touch my forehead to check I still carry that blue moment inside me. All spring while the moor drains its mass through culverts under my house, without surface, without colour, I close my eyes and listen to my breath rasp through the rubber tube, feel my strokes carry me forward, breath, blue, breath, blue, breath, blue.
The culverts run into the river that flows round the edge of my village. In the city where I have an office, the river used to skulk in a poisonous slick round the back of things too, but waterfront is an essential part of the regeneration kit and I eat my lunch among the warehouses converted to cafes, bars, apartments, a shopping complex, a multiplex cinema. I wait for a boat or a swimmer to complex the bright brown surface, a plex, a prow, a plough, and wonder if the water was replaced with glass anyone but the anglers or gulls would notice.
I eat my sandwich, look up at the criss-cross of air-wakes, a skyscape that would be as unrecognisable to you as the way the city looks now. When I watched the sky with you it would take all day to weave as many contrails, breath, blue, breath, blue, breath.
2 Surface
The sticky flow of the Aire brings back that time in the last century, we were walking along the dock in Västervik, you said look over there. Whenever you said look over there in that scrunched, hurried tone, touching your pearls, I looked wherever you were pointing away from. I am not sure if I saw the boy’s body, or just the rubberneckers lurch back, but I have an image of the tank then the mask of the diver surfacing, one hand on the wooden dock, the other bringing something white and floppy to the surface.
The next day I swam out into a pine and granite bay, climbed out onto a diving platform and got stuck. Looking down into the murky green water I knew the grey white shimmers were not a body, just weighted plastic containers on the anchor chain but I can still feel the sick in my stomach, how cold the warm water was, clutching my chest and neck as I swam ashore, eyes closed tight, tip toe bounced as soon as I touched bottom, ran as soon as I could force my knees.
This was long before I touched a dead body, yours, fascinated how you seemed drained of moisture, the fractal pattern of your skin like dry mud flats.
T HE FULL TEXT OF AIRE IS AVAILABLE IN THE INTERLAND ANTHOLOGY 'SIX STEPS UNDER WATER' PLEASE CLICK ON THE BOOK TO BUY
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