Baize

I should have tried harder
to love Steve Davis.
If not for his neat bow tie
then for his rare motor skills.

Good hand-eye co-ordination
smooths the path of a relationship.
At least one of you must have it,
like hope, and the ability

to love and keep one's word.
There was much I failed to understand
that Steve tried to explain:
that life's a process of elimination,

and the black truth must be toyed with
until it's the only way out.
One must maximise one's options
within the frame the game creates,

avoiding conflict until its result
can be decisive in your favour -
and the one true art is procrastination
so complex it appears something is happening

until finally, the smack of the cue
drives uncertainty off the face of the earth.
I've learned at last I don't need anything
that requires a hand to touch me.

I dream of the long green baize
where Steve and I might have lain,
my unmanageable dreams
finally, gratefully, pocketed.

Fishing Boat

I wanted so much to save it,
the carved sea, the white sky
bleaching me away.

The peregrines whipped from the chalk,
rushed up the cliff-face
like ash from the baking sea,

and I wanted so much to save it,
how we lay down, and the sun
fired our shadows into the rock.

Far below a fishing boat chugged
like a toy, pushing its blue V
to somewhere familiar.

And I saw the skipper recording,
I saw that he would be the one
to draft the flutter of clothes,

the obliteration of skin by sun,
the are they… ? are they…. ?
as the boat led him out of sight

of the dust and pebbles kicked
slowly down the chalky face.
I saw him scribbling the whispers,

the madness, the too-little time,
as the boat and its trawl of glimpses
slipped away from me, towards home.

Mule

He snaps five halters before I learn
that four hooves dug in means no.
I try weeping. I try weaving

a trail of Polos down the yard.
I tickle him under the chin.
He regards me without amusement.

I think he loves me, even as he sinks
his long teeth into my head when I drag
his foreleg an inch. I cry at his feet.

I nibble hay and try to understand.
I gather the Polos and feed them to him.
His lips are wet and grateful.

This is the language of refusal,
the eternal tenderness
of things that will not move.

By sunrise, he is my creature
and this is my home.
I cry and I beat him. I do not leave.

About Polly Clark

Polly Clark's first collection Kiss was a Poetry Book Society book of the year. She won an Eric Gregory award for her poetry in 1997 and in 2004 she was chosen as one of the best ten poets to emerge in the last decade by Mslexia magazine. Polly Clark is editor of the south east of England's literary website www.pirandello.org.uk and is a reviews editor for Poetry London. Her next collection
will be published in 2006.