Today, on Day 658 of the daily poems, X marks the spot, says our poet Fiona Clark. And there you may find Buried Treasure, and impressive rigging. (I’ve got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is – neither have you.)
X marks the spot
– based on the chap round the corner.
The man in the mobility buggy,
with his single grey pigtail
stiff as a creosote rope,
shiny brown bald head,
covered in a tracery of blue tattoos,
together with his neck, arms,
and one remaining leg:
Long John Silver, lacking only the parrot.
Today he watches a spider
weave her elasticated lace designs
in the archway of his porch.
He calls to passers-by to stop and see:
‘She did that just now, while I sat here.’
Time has lost its meaning for him, now,
perhaps, five minutes, 40 years.
‘You should have seen my other leg,
lost it on my Harley-Davidson in 1983!
I took a corner fast, bike fell on me.
A work of art. I told them, my left leg –
they should’ve pickled it and put it in
the Tate, inked with a pirate ship,
with all the ropes and sails –’
(Imagine a fighting frigate in full sail,
with all the halyards, sheets, brails,
vangs, tricing lines, warps, whips
and jack lines, a spider-web of intricacies),
‘Perhaps they buried it ? X marks the spot.
I’ve one foot in the grave, that’s certain.
Still, best foot forward, eh?’
A pause for laughter, then –
‘Look at that spider, now!’
With grace and thrift the airy acrobat
performs her dance,
eight legs and a willingness to please,
Olympic precision and a style
of structural rigging
which keeps him watching there til dusk.
Fiona Clark