Waders by Andew Motion

Waders

1.

After the accident, when summer brings

slow afternoons with nothing left to do,

I take what used to be your garden chair

and park it underneath the wayward ash

that sidles forward where the garden swerves

and hides the house from view. In secret then

I conjure up the notebook I have found

among your bedside things and open it.

Blank pages. Thoughts you never had, or had

but could not bring yourself to say. Should I

imagine them or write my own instead?

I close my eyes and scrutinize the white

that also lies inside me while the ash

rattles its pale-green keys above my head.

2.

The milk float with its thin mosquito whine

straining through larch and elder from the lane,

the nervous bottles in their metal basket

intent on music but without a tune,

the milkman in his doctor’s stubby coat

and sailor’s rakish dark-blue canvas cap

are all invisible, imagined/dreamed

beyond my curtains in the early light,

along with tissue footprints in the frost,

our rinsed-out empties, and the rolled-up note

exchanged for bottles with their silver tops

the blue tits have already broken through

to sip the stiffened plugs of cream before

we come downstairs and bring our order in.

3.

To think the world is endless, prodigal,

to part the hedgerow leaves and see the eggs

like planets in a crowded galaxy,

to hear my mother’s voice advising me

the mother bird herself will never mind

if I take only one and leave the rest,

means nothing more than showing interest.

As does the careful slow walk home, the ritual

of pinpricks through both ends, the steady breath

that blows the yolk and albumen clean out

but keeps the pretty shell intact, the nest

of crumpled paper in the cedar drawer,

the darkness falling then, the hush, and me

bringing the weight of my warm mind to bear.

4.

Beyond the grazing and the bramble bank

where on another day I might lie down

and press my ear against the trampled earth

to hear the rabbits scuffling underground,

a headland round the Ashgrove leads me on

past wheat fields which still show the buffeting

of last night’s storm, toward the Blackwater.

The stream has long since burst inside my head,

the banks collapsed, the water meadows drowned,

the mesh of overhanging branches bowed

with plastic voodoo junk and hanks of wool.

Then I arrive and see things as they are:

a settled surface with a clearing sky,

and shining gravel drifting inside clouds.

5.

My father with no explanation stays

behind at home; my mother drives away

and takes me with her to the Suffolk coast

where I lie down all day on rounded stones

and will the sun to thaw my frozen brain

while she . . . I’ve no idea what she does,

until the evening she manhandles me

to stand beside her in the chestnut shade

which makes a double darkness on the lawn

and watch the round moon roll into our sky

as Neil Armstrong takes his one small step

and pokes his flag into the silver dust

although we cannot see him, nor he us

except in ways I think my father might.

6.

Before our time they used my room to store

apples collected from those crooked trees

now wading waist deep at the garden end

in frilly white-capped waves of cow parsley,

and laid them out in rows not touching quite.

I know all this because the floorboards show

wherever they had missed one as it turned

to mush and left a round stain on the wood.

My bed stands over them and when at night

my eyes grow used to darkness they appear:

the Coxes, Bramleys, Blenheim Oranges

whose names alone can fill the empty air

with branches weighted down by next year’s crop

and turn its scent half bitter and half sweet.

7.

That lead tank like a coffin with no lid

lying between the cooler greenhouse room

my mother uses for her cuttings trays,

and one as steamy as the rain forest

with air so thickened by tomato plants

it lies like moist green velvet on my tongue—

that lead tank, that disgusting (almost)

store of syrupy black water is where Kit

my brother slipped, or threw himself to see

if that would make our father like him more,

and where, as I look down to see myself

alive and sensible, I envy him

his moment in a time outside our time,

free from the earth and all its appetites.

8.

The low tent-tunnel of the laurel walk

where no one but a child can stand today,

encloses me but keeps the world in view

in sudden supple leaps and starts of light.

Here out of sight I wait to meet myself

with no idea of what myself might be.

I drink the musty air and bide my time.

I shake the sullen shadows from my head.

I feel the deep earth rising in my bones.

I make believe the shivering small flies

beside me on the leaves, the sparrow gang

that flusters in its shallow bowl of dust

suppose that I want nothing more from them

except to stay here and not mean a thing.

9.

I try my father’s waders on for size

then take, with him encouraging, his rod

and wading stick, his canvas bag, his cap

rigid beneath its crown of favorite flies,

and step into the river. From the bank

he says I look like him. As for myself

I only think of how to stand upright

with water hardening one second round

my ankles, and the next uprooting me

as though I have no purchase on the world.

My father shouts, Don’t fight it. I obey.

I let the deluge settle round my heart

then lay me on my back and carry me

round the long sweep beyond my father’s sight.

10.

Those roofless kennels where the nettles shake

their fine-haired leaves and tiny bright-green buds.

That almost buried path of blood-red bricks

confined both sides by tiles shaped like rope.

The ruined square of cracked disrupted blocks

where once a summerhouse had turned and stared.

These are the former glories of the house

although I like their fall and brokenness

much more than grieving for a time I missed.

As also I like walking with the ghosts

that wander through the garden everywhere—

the mother and her son whose footsteps leave

no prints beside us in the grass as though

our selves are all the company we keep.