Carrier

She goes through water. She is made of bread, beans, telephone conversations, milk, tea, music and shampoo. Planes are on her decks. Like egrets n a hippopotamus; like idiots, or children. Her flanks? Well surely they are old and quite forgotten thoughts. Her metal is thick. In the middle of each slab it's as dark as it, one day, will be. The weight would press you as thin as skin, as thin as nothing. The anchor chains are of a monstrous toy. The links hold each other and where they touch is some awful pain. Now look away and listen. I think she is telling you something. To be down here, in the silly, dark waves of the world's dull stomach; the sticky surface, the clicking foam, the dirty smell of it. Fact: the carrier's salted sides might be meat, or my unhappiness, or my father, or something that for the moment, slips my mind. They are going down underwater, going up above it. Be sorry for it, please, because its ours. I'm sure it is. Yes, I am quite sure it is! Mark Waldron