They lived on the Somerset coast,
more than one of them
wore my name
before I had the chance
to try it.
I found the street they lived in
written in census scrawl,
found myself walking it for real
along the harbour side
where they made their lives
among and in the boats.
I stood at the quay’s head,
watching little cottages
white-painted,
blinking in the rain,
wondered which of them they’d occupied.
I wanted them to call to me,
to fill my head
with salty waves,
tall fishing tales and shattered masts,
shanties that no other family
could muster from the past.
As hard as I imagined them
setting sail and floating past
to open sea,
or half-drowned, desperate returns
to the safety of their wave-swept doors,
as hard as I climbed their harbour steps
they would not fill the outlines
of my dreams;
the ghosts you know are there
will not appear
just for curious
and distant sons.
copyright John Webber 2009
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