How to make a pot of tea

Take a bowl of weed from the sea,
plunge in your hands, wrists,
then up to the elbows.

Soon you are wading, you are waist-deep
and before you know it
you are living under water.

Time passes. You have a new job,
have taken up different hobbies,
have learned to burn sea-coal to warm yourself.

More time passes, and your life has become
a series of complicated pretends, and you imagine
you were born here; were brought up in a family of part-fish.

Then you find the syringe
in the pocket of your old coat. It’s filled with air
that wants to bubble into your veins.

When you climb from the bowl
you leave a puddle of water on the kitchen floor.
You fill up the kettle and forget to turn off the tap.

The Orange Seller

A woman on the bus
is selling oranges;
mouldy little oranges
with no juice inside.

Yet people are buying them
and peeling them
with a grim-faced
determination.

She is shoeless,
and chirrups
like a ragged little bird.
And still we buy her oranges.

Her hands are outstretched,
as if expecting rain.