Finistère
June 23rd – 24th, 2016

Two table’s worth of no-longer strangers
at dusk on a lane of nautical miles,
basket of bread, bottles of wine, talk of home
and places called home; watching the beams
of the continent’s light, see a lava-red sun
shrink to a flame at the earth’s ‘very edge’ —
edge of Ostrava, Riga, Leipzig, Graz.

At 5.00 a.m. news from home on every screen;
I wipe the sleep from the blink of an eye,
my shoulders slumped on the rail of the deck —
see the creature’s strut, its busy beak,
obsessed, obnoxious, the ruler of waves.

I am buried at sea, consigned to a martial,
barnacled, wreck; a grubby ghost, I stink of the past.

Ian C. Webb lives in Yorkshire. Recently graduated from the University of York with an M.A. in Poetry & Poetics, his work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, Cathexis North-West Press, French Literary Review, Snakeskin and The Charles Carter.