FLOATING ON AIR

An aluminium foot-bath –

that’s all it took

for that first adventure.

Light enough for a seven-year-old to trail

the quarter-mile through the paddock’s whisper of dock

and Sperry’s Guernsey field,

it tickled the grass stems behind me,

scratched aromatic crusted cowpats.

The grownups wouldn’t like me

taking the bath without permission.

I walked into the declining sun,

dragging my guilt.

In the willow’s shadow

the brook widened

into a watering place

of hoof-punched mud.

Wellingtoned kids looked up,

wanted a ride.

I just held on.

The grownups wouldn’t like it at all.

From where I stood before I launched,

I saw the higher level beyond the sluice,

its water-plantains’ trembling spears,

its bobbing frogbits’ yellow eyes,

a curving willow-line

and shimmering under-sky.

With no more faith in it

than in Christ’s walk upon the lake,

I squelched the bath over onto the sky,

gripping both rims

and placed a foot on deck,

winched up the other,

hunkered down.

It bore me up.

I barely heard the sluice

divulge its singing flow of spirit-hair

or the shouted recognition of my feat.

My palms scooped out a path

through icy light.

With three-inch draft I reached

the two-foot abyss,

skimmed round in evening fire

and looked straight up into the eyes

of adult wrath.