Boat story

boat story

the waterways seduce them -
canal desire.
they find themselves a boat and
spend nights of narrow love
nosing like otters.
he grows whiskers and a taste for fish,
she squeals and contorts in the water,
every slippery, acrobatic act
a feat of mind over muscle.

there is something Victorian about them -
urchins, riverside rats.
they're tinted in shoreline squalor
by the thick brown canals
and the sepia sunlight
up to their mucky mitts in mud and algae.
while Bourneville is busy mixing chocolate,
they play and preen,
lick each other clean
and love each other out to dry.

they are gluttons for nourishment
and an affront to public health.
their boat is a lair of
bones and scales and eyes and idleness;
the floor a silky riddle of
guts and fluids.
it reeks.
it creaks of tyres on the concrete quay.
it stinks of too much pleasure
for a pleasureboat moored so close
to such a mess of tarmac,
the visceral twists of merging motorways.

but the tailbacks and catastrophe
just happen around them.
city otters simply float on their backs
and relax.
sometimes,
if you close your eyes,
heavy traffic can sound like the sea.