A Love Song for Leviathan

A Love Song for Leviathan

It was life on red alert, ambushed
by vanilla drooling from a cone,
by wasps, delight and tar, our backsides

mauled by the same new pebbles
as we squatted on a throne of time's
heaped bones above the same new water,

squabbling. Small waves nibbled shingle,
moulded the ossuary. What we craved
was instant hugeness, rearing terrors,

something absolute without a shape
lurking in the glass-green chill. Tiny fishes
flickered round our legs like rubber bands

too busily unreal to match the treasured
monsters homing blindly in from under
the horizon, secret reason for this swaying

element that somehow always failed
to kill us, leaving us to wobble bloodless
semaphoring back, back up the endless

slope, appalled on new-born feet.