The View from Here
where the floating dead are tied to kelp
and in the roll of limbs
no longer screaming ghost a ghost
but somehow how is how this water
swims and within swimming hymns of drag
each click and spring of undiscovered
living late to open eyes in every pore
the skin to look a brittle star cast off
the sea a mind might seem the same repeating
but only is in change and now
hold the tiller remind the nerves
to not react to every thought
but respond
to each experience
each current joining out
from panic what breath remains
a s o l u t e
watching in dispersal at dispersal womb
everyness a recording over and over
but let’s not be melodramatic
it’s all over now
Of First Permission
to understand beyond any knowing that there is a sky of it
a vast and blue primacy beyond you
but held within you and that itself can hold
you into understanding beyond any knowing that you fall away
to join it in being more than a struggling blink
to become and see that every pin to scratch the eye
is the pain of every second arrow and its thinking life away
from living and if only you could change
you say if only I could change then I will be
without understanding as a need to know the rhyme
of every cloud as it scuds a shadow’s track
across the nervous field of sight to say I’m wrong
something in me is wrong and it is me and my fault
and I cannot see for this and slip
away from how all the living continues
but return us to understand beyond knowing that there is a sky
reflected in the river and that rests
across the ocean and without divide
to understand beyond knowing that it is a way to float
in the merge of breathing
to be beyond you but held within you
and that itself can hold to be a dream of movement
a never still as stillness folding
rest about the eyes, a way back that always is
____________
David Spittle is a poet / filmmaker. His first collection, All Particles and Waves
(Black Herald Press, 2020), followed the pamphlet, B O X (HVTN, 2018). He has
published a book of interviews, Light Glyphs (Broken Sleep, 2021) with poets and
filmmakers. Spittle’s film, Light Noise, was broadcast by the BBC, available on
iPlayer.