Boarding
In her nineties she begins to daydream
shrugging off the rug and velcroed slippers
to dig her toes in the tumbled strandline
of the residents’ lounge. Standing,
she watches while the morning swishes up
around her, noisy with the squawk
of what she thinks are oystercatchers
dressed in black and white
and the long-stretched necks of gannets
cramming food and squabbling. She walks
to the water’s edge where clothes are piled
in heaps. Here are boards, leaning
on the breakwater, and she flicks one upright
with a practised foot, drags it down the beach
to deeper water. The sand’s the shade of early morning
tea. She tosses bread into the sky
to get a feeling for the breeze, manoeuvres
so the sail is downwind of the nurses
skimming through the corridor towards her.
Surf’s high. She heaves her stern-ward hand
hard against the boom to pull away.
Rosemary Badcoe walks the moors and argues about the nature of consciousness. She has been published in various magazines and anthologies, most recently Fourteen Magazine and Other Poetry. She is editor of the online poetry magazine Antiphon and moderator of the poetry forum Poets’ Graves.