11 | April | 2016 | reubenwoolley

—Alice Oswald The Self-Playing Instrument Of Water

Often he rose at five cracked ice to wash

gulped tea black as night’s last swatches

on the rare times he bought blade to chin

hands calloused from plough mill or forge

the prisms…. leapt out of puddled rain took him

no further than a Welsh shoreline

Often he sliced skin…. his blood….. a penance

for lack of craft on hand me down strop

Now ……..like eye of dead sun…….. the crucible hangs

useless on its axis

much the same as plastic razors storm blown

across polythene patchwork oceans

coral bleached……… crawling up

long sampan hulls…….. & tourist boats

Excuse me Sir !

are those bloodstains on your cricket whites?

No Sir they are overs I wiped like lips around basmati

where all of us spoke English eating cardamom from viceroy fields.

Excuse me mate

I watched those wickets smash like little bones

and remembered that earthquake only felt there

where children were detained with water from French glaciers.

Excuse me kids,

you can’t play cricket here this is prohibited grass

you can’t use fanta bottles as wickets but you can

south of Peshawar where wells blink from earthquakes.

Excuse me all,

I wanted to detain you through the power of an average poem

and question why as a white man I might grow that wrong beard

but if you want to stop me we can talk about Cricket, and that.

reubenwoolley