- Patrick Deeley
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.