Tuesday Poem - Sotto Voce

SOTTO VOCE

Striking, the ambiguity of language – sound

and sound, hold

and hold, birth

and berth.

Sotto voce. Sotto voce.

Our brave boat’s hull

is a dull silver arc

at odds, and at one

with the ocean’s shifting

meniscus, the sky infinite

yet Doubtful as a clenched fist,

a menace of wishful thinking.

Mariners without local knowledge

are advised to exercise caution.

I am no old man of the sea (my stomach

one of two that pitch and turn

in 4m swells), but Lance and the Breaksea Girl

are unperturbed; back and forth she rocks

back and forth, a metronome used, by now,

to holding her own in stormy waters. 

Sotto voce. Sotto voce.

Ours is hardly the first voyage, neither will it be

the last. There are records aplenty

of this coastline, these steep, hard-nosed

mountains, the seductive tongues

of waterfalls.

           

I have scoured the record books,

wondered more about the lines not there

than the many written; nowhere

do we find Cook – or Orton –

writing of love or lust

or loneliness at sea; in the journals, no poetry

to soften the un-yielding years, the reek

of sour beer and unwashed skin,

the loud absence of women.

These men, too, must surely have known

the sudden singe of heat

on heart, the un-confided bruise?

But

who

am

I

to

make

such

assumptions?

On the edge of the clearing weather,

mountain, sky and ocean lean towards

each other with conspiratorial intention.

They are lifetimes ahead of us

the way they know how to sleep

together, dream together, lie awake

in the dark together, rarely - and always - 

alone

with their separate thoughts.

Where are we to drop anchor?

I am reluctant to interrupt this silence.

CB 2008 - Western Fiordland, New Zealand  - written after a waterborne residency on board the conservation yacht, Breaksea Girl.

Leaving Camelot - pastel on paper 2009

Home again. Just. 

It was wonderful to read your words at last night's opening, and to talk about the journey of - and process behind - this exhibition. I'm too tired to write anything even vaguely intelligible now, but this I must say . . . Sharing your words with the community (I wrote them out on cotton paper and invited others to read them out loud) and speaking of the gift of this community - the ethos of trust and generosity that buoys us along - contributed a special something to last night's gathering. It was suggested I read one of my own poems, too; the one I chose was Sotto Voce. 

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