To walk with you, David, is too sad sometimes,

To walk with you, David, is too sad sometimes, even 200 million years ago

or when holidaying in a poem it could be the tender albatross chick’s

love story: first time alone, falls from the nest, unrecognised on return.


You evidence that this world is a wasteland of love and sacrifice, and pointless

sacrifice, of dead seal pups wind-stung in our climate’s increasing storms.

(Here, only one mammal will shield its young in this kind of blizzard

but we really do not need orchestras, or you, David, to suggest

how much it might have hurt to leave and take refuge in the deep)

And of survival – dog eat dog eat under-dog until nobody knows

who they are backing anymore. I suggested we escape all this,

seahorse somewhere tropical but it never works out that way.

 

Instead, an Almoldova electric underworld of killer blubber, a tacky pink

starfish world of Aunty’s handbags and hankies dabbing underwater tears.

It is not comic, Hollywood nor Disney, no Python bunny here, David.

It is not a Goa high street of window-shopping cows and hot leather.

It is simply cold and ugly beside the beauty of baby penguins

as half a world away bulls hammer-smash each other in dozer waves

rippling tasers of fat for bacon-thin gammon strips of St Andrews.


Who would surface, and brace for this? Blizzards sting like a disturbed nest

or the scissor kick squeal sequel of pot lobster. I was not looking for sick

head chefs, Nationalists, and squid pissing ink at closing time. 

It is all too familiar.


Who would surface for when wherever you look pushes further away -

to where it is too hard for love. It appears too hard to love anymore.  

Holidaying with you in the strongest currents swirling around this tip of land, 

waiting for krill and plankton spring banquets to seat humpbacks 

in anthracite ammonite spirals bubbling champagne nets - should be beautiful, 

this rising to toast the feast apocalypse.


They are bravely living, each one, while I am afraid, David, that you

are a Goliath of truth science smashing through the last grit of dream

we are all made from. Not your fault I will hate even you for it, the orchestra,

the ice, and the crazed glazed lobster, while I cry for your pod and krill.

 

6/9/2020