{"id":465,"date":"2011-12-12T16:14:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T16:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=465"},"modified":"2011-12-12T16:14:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T16:14:00","slug":"the-lesson-from-stephen-boyce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-lesson-from-stephen-boyce\/","title":{"rendered":"'The Lesson' from Stephen Boyce"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lesson<\/span>
for Vim<\/span>

On my back in the pool<\/span>
as the morning sun sweeps round<\/span>
from behind the hills<\/span>
and swallows skim the surface of the water, <\/span>
I\u2019m staring into the blue.<\/span>
And it feels like falling.<\/span>

Like falling upwards,<\/span>
sudden and vertiginous.<\/span>

Disentangled from the net <\/span>
of light that laps around me,<\/span>
beyond the filmy globs in my eyes,<\/span>
the wisps of white that float <\/span>
above the valley slopes,<\/span>
I am falling.<\/span>

Falling upwards.<\/span>
Into the blue, the endless blue.<\/span>

And I remember asking you<\/span>
as we sat beneath the wisteria<\/span>
while your tears were drying<\/span>
and lizards scurried into the shade:<\/span>
\u201cWhen does falling become floating?\u201d<\/span>

And you said: \u201cYou\u2019ll know.<\/span>
If you only let go.\u201d<\/span>

All week the red-backed shrike was in the acacia,<\/span>
among its ripening purple pods,<\/span>
urging her fledglings <\/span>
into their first breathless <\/span>
and uncertain flight.<\/span>



*Stephen Boyce<\/span> lives in Winchester. He has won the Kent & Sussex and Leicester poetry competitions and his work has appeared widely in magazines  His collection Desire Lines<\/span> was published by Arrowhead Press in 2010. www.stephenboycepoetry.co.uk<\/a><\/span>


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The Lessonfor VimOn my back in the poolas the morning sun sweeps roundfrom behind the hillsand swallows skim the surface of the water, I\u2019m staring into the blue.And it feels like falling.Like falling upwards,sudden and vertiginous.Disentangled from the net of light that laps around me,beyond the filmy globs in my eyes,the wisps of white that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}