Sea Change

last Labour Day, for instance
we were overcome with sunfish
great heaving herds of them
along a quaking sky

the tallest rivalled Sky Tower
& blocked out our light
tankers crashed, balloons were stranded
twenty storeys high

I saw you caught amongst them
trying to swim upwind
I think I heard you screaming
in an alcove of my eye

please do not display your wounds to me
until you’ve figured out
how to cover them in fish scales
& taught yourself to fly

My Year of the Ant Gardens

The year we lived in the caravan park,
I so much wanted a pet (missing the dogs
and guinea pig we had to leave behind)

I started making ant gardens in the sand
next to the fence by the caravan,
setting out stone paths, little ponds,

with weeds for trees and twigs for fences,
and I wished and wished we lived in a house
like other people, but we didn’t.

There was everything an ant could want
in those gardens: food, furniture.
I tried my best to make it all attractive.

Ah, but they never stayed, the ants, despite it.
They always had somewhere else to get to.
They only ever hurried blithely by.