blue skies poetry

In my dream we are terrible fish 
mouths slicing our cheeks
as we siphon kelp
Sometimes we hide in the green
from the ripple and flash
of the diver and her mask
Then over the ledge
through the dark water we fall
watched by The Old Man of Hoy

                And the sea hides us
                under her chop and swell
                But that diver with her lens
                has followed us down –
                down down down down
                past the horrible present
                and the absurd tolling knell
What are the secrets
I will never uncover
even with a camera and a knife?
Now that the ferryman is gone
all that remains is your absence
and the shadow of the woman in the rubber suit
And still that diver shines images
floats them to me
in memory of your mouth –
widened in death
so that instead of a pucker for a kiss
or the broadness of a smile
                                just a gaping black oh
In remembrance of  your lips –
now the surreal purple of live labia
their applied colour offed by holy palmers
not content to finger your clothes
the stone from Arran hidden between you clasped hands
or the Black Watch blanket over your legs
They brush your mouth with theirs
leaving you in a mounted bass contortion
Beautiful work to some
an unearthly alum to me
I’d rather a photograph of the salty lick of your tongue
on an ice cream after a walk
All this in the mirror’s extent
below
the terrible fish
of my own reflection
(m)otherless
but I am her and she is me
forever in fins and black rubber
no matter the roll and swell
of dotted ice

double bergs
or the thunderous crack
of Easter melt