The Boat

It serves as an umbrella, the boat on top of a tree,

only the odd drip coming through, all

that furious rainsong playing for rather than on us

as we squint at the watery-eyed pinholes

in our aluminium ceiling. And when the downpour

stops, we still linger even as our thoughts

are ferried away to dwell on such tall tales

as the ‘unearthing’ of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat,

or the stone seat that ‘floats’ in our local

park, its four legs submerged under an inundation

from the River Dodder. The world

that works to mismatch things, that has them

play off one another – we live for this,

our own out-of-kilter nature approved in the boat’s

resemblance to a hammerhead shark

as it tilts above us here; in the returning sunshine’s

pale, slantwise beams found to waver

at each drag and jig of the upturned vessel

on a rig of branches breasting the ocean of the air.