Salting the skin
The sea becomes the colour of whale skin & chalk.
Hanging on a day,
abandoned by the chalk light.
A worm moon
left its portrait
under the drifting ebb,
sketched in ridges by the salt-water whirls
and the endless boxing sands.
I am looking out, with the land behind me.
Where the oil works shimmers in its nightly crown
like every swallowed light of the ocean
speared to ground.
The compact black of the sea in front of me.
A black hole of quiet gravity.
I am the only light on the ocean.
Then a false phare beam
breaks the hill brow to my side,
a car’s light
stranding me as the whale
sunk in the sour-dunes of dreaming.
Every tear,
salting the skin to crack,
under stresses,
under duress of my hidden moons,
my own careless forces of gravity.
Like the face of the tracer moon
I see my light
to be hung
on the broken starry.
Christopher Hopkins grew up in Neath, South Wales during the 1970’s surrounded by a landscape of machines and mountains. Christopher currently resides in the Canterbury area. His debut chapbook Take Your Journeys Home (Clare Songbirds Publishing House) has been nominated for the IPPY book award for poetry and two Pushcart Prize nominations. His second chapbook The Last Time We Saw Strangers is due out in Spring 2018. His work has been published in multiple publications including The Morning Star, Backlash Press and The Paragon Journal.