small lights shine across the bay
from the direction of Wrangle or Old Leake –
in the absence of a New York bridge
I used to practise trumpet
in the phone box by the lighthouse
but it's harder on trombone:
now the glass has gone
the sound insulation isn't what it was
but in recent bouts of fog
I've prevented several shipwrecks
& prompted two new local legends
regarding the transmigration of lighthouse-keepers'
incessant moaning
the sand & salt get everywhere
under your flaps & scouring in your slide
I've seen the barn owl solo down the Stiffkey road at dawn
you have to stop & tongue the light
wherever you can find it
1½ ounces of Selmer Tuning Slide & Cork Grease
sort out most problems
just drip some in your sugo smear it round your rims
but watch out if you rub it on your chest
like Vick's & then make love:
I rocketed for the headboard
with the pace of a Ducati
& no goggles or helmet to hand
unwilling to answer civil questions for a week
I just wore dark glasses & slid the Voodoo
Trombone Quartet in the Walkperson
why do you think the Spartans camped
wherever their Mascot Goat sat down?
& after Otho was dethroned in 1862 can we really believe
that his successor William George Prince of Denmark
was picked by Olivia Newton-John who then forgot to tell him –
so he only found out he was King of Greece
from a scrap of newspaper that wrapped his fish sandwich?
I'm having astakomakaronáda
as it rains tables & chairs on the terrace
putting cubic kilometres of sea mist in my ouzo
DVDs of elsewhere can occupy decades
& only last week the rain stopped for hours:
these dunes dried in a southerly breeze
& my mind briefly lightened like the sand
tipped whispering off the edge of itself
Norfolk February 2007