1 The Point
Those were the days –
booting a leather football
truer and farther
then you ever expected!
It went rattling
hard and fast
over daisies and benweeds,
it thumped
but it sang too,
a kind of dry, ringing
foreclosure of sound.
Or else, a great catch
and a cry from the touch-line
to Point her! That spring
and unhampered smash-through!
Was it you
or the ball that kept going
beyond you, amazingly
higher and higher
and ruefully free?
2 The Pulse
The effortlessness
of a spinning reel. One quick
flick of the wrist
and your minnow sped away
whispering and silky
and nimbly laden.
It seemed to be all rise
and shine, the very opposite
of uphill going – it was pure
duration, and when it ended,
the pulse of the cast line
entering water
was smaller in your hand
than the remembered heartbeat
of a bird. Then, after all of that
runaway give, you were glad
when you reeled in and found
yourself strung, heel-tip
to rod-tip, into the river's
steady purchase and thrum.
3 A Haul
The one that got away
from Thor and the giant Hymer
was the world-serpent itself.
The god had baited his line
with an ox-head, spun it high
and plunged it into the depths.
But the big haul came to an end
when Thor's foot went through the boards
and Hymer panicked and cut
the line with a bait-knife. Then
roll-over, turmoil, whiplash!
A Milky Way in the water.
The hole he smashed in the boat
opened, the way Thor's head
opened out there on the sea.
He felt at one with space,
unroofed and obvious –
surprised in his empty arms
like some fabulous high-catcher
coming down without the ball.