Let's Buy A Caravan Dear

LET’S BUY A CARAVAN* DEAR AND BE DOWN AT THE SEA

By JC STREET © 2001 circa November 28, 2001

This shrammed coast, toast
twinges
on the winedark morning
palate

fetchingly . . .
pleasant and warm, dolloped
perhaps, with
those hotel-stolen little
marmalades . . . strawberry
jams, but only
these bleak barren rocks tide-struck
for view

down here the wind
whistles and shrieks, in the
night, the
machine rain rattles, Gunga
Din, the tin roof of this
shaking metal coffin, the fog

ghoul moan off the Copelands** pulls
God-fear from our spittle-streaked
mouths

wretched-sweated in sleep we
roll and writhe and release
rattle-muffles and sighs, and
murmured fear, until

dawn’s lissome grey cats claw our dreams and draw
our crusted mouths to another
glug glug glass of warm
Sancerre

and then

a hopeless quest for more of this
Nepenthe . . . that
we first dreamed after midnight . . . more
little death that we can keep till noontime, and
beyond

-30-

*Caravan is British parlance for “trailer”

**Copelands: the Copeland Islands, off Donaghadee, Northern Ireland, north
County Down