Neglected Poems No. 5 – The Water Boatman

Wednesday 18th February

This came out of Catherine’s Story.  I took a small portion and expanded it.  I couldn’t help myself.  As so often happens the thing wrote itself.  And hey, surprise surprise – this one doesn’t rhyme.  Actually I should try writing free verse more often, in many ways it works better.  The thing is I so very rarely write any poetry; you need to be in exactly the right mood….

 

The Water Boatman

I always get this terrible urge to please people

By telling them exactly what they want to hear

It’s the pleasure

That gleam of excitement in their eyes

As they realize

They’ve won

That is so addictive for me.

 

But I really should have listened to her

I should have looked beyond the words she was saying

To discover what she meant

 

The trouble is

I hear the words they say

But never decant the true spirit

The clear essence

Out of the sediment of emotions

Murking my mind.

 

I am too interested in being the artist

The dilatory creator with his box of coloured oils

Mixing and daubing

Blending the tints

Melding them

Caressing the paint

Onto the canvas

Of our bodies

 

I was never really in the picture at all

I was outside the frame

Admiring my handiwork

And like all bad artists

Who never know when to stop

I kept on tinkering

Teasing out a crease of a line here

Darkening a hue there

Redefining the sadness in her eyes

Until all that sparkling glimmer was lost in a flood

A welter of tears

 

I had been a patient listener

When listening was part of the key

To turn

The tumblers of her heart

 

But I hadn’t heard what she was really trying to tell me at all

I had been too busy amassing

An array of clues

With which to reconstruct the image of her

Triggers to fire the moulded clay

Salt to crack the wounded glaze

When

Inevitably

She would be gone.

 

Those golden moments between orgasm and sleep

When the only thing you hear is the quick pound

Of hearts-a-flutter

And  those waves of contentment come flooding in

 

Her flushed face

And hot hot breath on my breast

While my fingers stroke her damp sweaty hair

And the skin that was alabaster cool is now hot

Aroused and tender

So tender that the merest touch traces

A blotchy line of red

To these dilettante fingertips.

 

And then the morning

With her hot little body

Curled up against my back.

The dank taste of her slept-in body

The sharp and loamy smell of her

Crumbs of sleep still in her eyes

Un-brushed teeth

Un-guarded breath

The matted tendrils of hair

The rust of desire and the verdigris of hope.

 

And I never heard what she was trying to tell me

Only the words she used

I never took the time to discover the person swimming

Deep beneath the surface

I never discerned her frantic struggle

To escape the net

I had spread for her

 

Like a water boatman

Skimming the water for reactions

I was lurking

Waiting and listening

Recording the minute changes in surface tension

Unaware that she had swallowed too much water already

And was far beneath me now

As she was swept away

And out of my grasp forever