Shells

An uncanny attraction
for something unseen.

The mystic eroticism
of imagined nudity.

Glimpses in the eyes
of things unsaid.

Can you hear the sea
in sea shells too ?


(For F.)


26 July 1983
 
 

Thus begins the next phase of my life. Ten months after my first wife left me I found… now here I really want to write “the next great love of my life” or even “the first great love of my life” but the words don’t feel right. In July of 1983 I would’ve written it and believed it but by June 1994 it was all over. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that in December of 1996 I met Carrie, my present wife, but there were two others in between. I’m no Picasso—far from it—but I tend to divide my poetry into blocks based on the woman I was with, in love with or besotted by at the time. This, then, is the beginning of the Poems for F. period—Blue period sounds so much cooler—and, at least at the start, there are a lot of poems dedicated to her. My first wife got one, the not even slightly romantic ‘Mental in Glasgow’ (#457), although ‘Yesterday’ (#466) really should’ve been dedicated to her. It was the one and only love poem I ever wrote for her and, had you asked me, at the time I would’ve sworn I was in love with her. Maybe not so much after all.

‘Shells’ is not really a love poem. I don’t do traditional love poems. I write poems that read like a guy in love wrote them but they’re not always very romantic—wait until we get to ‘For F.’ (#555) and you’ll see what I mean—but I can tell you, in July 1983 there was only one thing on my mind although I’m not sure it was love. I’m not sure it was lust either but lust did get in there and cloud the issue for a while. This, then, is a you’ve-got-my-attention poem. I badly wanted her to be my muse.

F. was married when I first met her although she and her husband separated shortly afterwards—nothing to do with me—and so I saw in her a kindred spirit, a shell of a person, hollowed out and fragile.