Water
from a series of 4 poems – Earth, Air, Fire and Water – called Elements, Us

Water, which can be so solid it breaks your neck,
spreads tentacles over me, ticklish, skin-coloured,
moving nakedly. When my chest fills some slithers down my sides,
some curls in the bowl of my stomach. Some nights
I think it thinks, that when it reflects me
in drops scattered like seed, it sees more than I see.

But don't imagine water knows anything more than its own
enlargement and diminishment with the seasons; water
which, so simply ingested by animal, plant and air,
is part of everywhere. Water, making beauty of light,
assuming the shape of the container, what do you become
when nothing contains you? I go down to watch

the ocean, the power-mad turbines of its waves
generating fear and energy richly
and in proportion. Later I bathe in the shallows
of the spilling brain, knowing that mountains away
water falls in slow motion through terrified minds; that
breaking down my ears and round my eyes, it's killing mine.
 

Ian Crockatt

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