My grandfather on my mother’s side
was a great fisherman.
Though I didn’t share his passion,
I would go and sit beside him by the river,
my float drifting, hook unbaited,
catching nothing, reading Homer,
while he seemed to swirl beside me: a djinn
inside a flashing silver weave
of fin and ruby blood, in love
with every living moment of the day.

I was far away when he died
and missed the funeral, but later, by his grave,
I watched my grandmother
stand alone against a darkening sky,
and knew that unseen down below
he was part of the curving world
that supported her as she stood there,
and also when she walked away.

Six months later, I saw him once:
a fish from the neck down,
lazily swimming between the reeds,
wrapped up in his own thoughts.
He didn’t see me
and I was able to watch him feeding on insects
for several precious minutes.
Then, with a dull gold flick of his tail
and a smile on his face,
he went from my life forever.

I used a pin of mistletoe
to unbubble a group of seated men,
who smelled of pipes and musky tweed
and tied small bones with the hair of dolls.

‘These are the bones of yourself as a bird
and we are your cupboard uncles.
We will guide you down the ways of life,
taking the roles of all your loves
and show you joy and the hard in red
to make you forget your sins in cloud.
Now, my dear, it’s two o´clock,
time for nuts and scented oil.’

But I saw that they had the gaze of owls
and midnight crouched in their horny smiles,
so I fled to the house by a shadeless route
and stamped in every sky-filled pool,
surrounding myself with suns in drops.

Now ravens walk on the distant lawns
and discharge their calls in the moving air,
and still I see in the looking-glass
the unfortunate whistling face.