Stealing Tiles
Soft soles trod the seasoned wood
Of my DIY jetty
He leapt from his window to the Grand Canal
I walked down James Street to the Freshney.
I zipped coins, wrapped notes in plastic bags,
Changed my Saturday clothes.
Unseen in the spring of morning
With string bag strapped to my back
I slid in.
It was cool with weed, Algaed with vengeance,
Slippery with guilt
And swollen with the shock
Of a ship turning in the dock.
A duck quartet played out my entrance.
The pull was hard
Like pyjamas in a lifesaving simulation
I passed the pike lying in wait
By the bridge
Then split to the part
Where roads end and the secrets start
As residents style their riverbanks
In quirky furtive tales of covert calmness
It ends at the weir
And the place where the eels were poisoned.
We came here to see them
White bellied and bloated
A carpeted tide, which seemed like an ocean
The last part was easy.
As I swam alongside the Tap & Spile
I swear my legs lost their separation and flipped me
Into the basin, then next to the barge
Shinned up
Shook off slime like ribbons of aspiration
With no keening this time, no sirens
or dropping to the pavement in search of solutions
Just shopping
With a memory of shiny green tiles
And painstaking excavation.
