Dart (6 page)

I steer my wave-ski into caves
sealwatcher

horrible to enter alone

The fur, the hair, the fingernails, the bones.

Flick out the torch, the only thread between down here and daylight

and count five while the sea suckles and settles.

Self-maker, speaking its meaning over mine.

At low water

I swim up a dog-leg bend into the cliff,

the tide slooshes me almost to the roof

and float inwards into the trembling sphere

of one freshwater drip drip drip

where my name disappears and the sea slides in to replace it.

There the musky fishy genital smell

of things not yet actual: shivering impulses, shadows, propensities,

little amorous movements, quicksilver strainings and restrainings:

each winter they gather here,

twenty seals in this room behind the sea, all swaddled

and tucked in fat, like the soul in is cylinder of flesh.

With their grandmother mouths, with their dog-soft eyes, asking

who’s this moving in the dark? Me.

This is me, anonymous, water’s soliloquy,

all names, all voices, Slip-Shape, this is Proteus,

whoever that is, the shepherd of the seals,

driving my many selves from cave to cave …