Ben Banyard, Hi-Viz

Slow: Learner

Check your mirrors – rear and both wings.

Push the stalk up to hear that homely tick-tock.

Set the gas – a gentle see-saw balance of pedals.

Release the handbrake and turn the wheel,

look, look, look all around.

And holy shit the car rolls heavily under your touch,

gulps greedily at the asphalt, a trundling monster.

It’ll take a lot more moving off (uphill sometimes),

reversing around corners and parking without clipping the kerb

before you’re allowed to do this without your co-pilot

(a sage owl, feet poised on the dual controls,

with whom you row and get red-faced in confusion).

But then one day, to the strains of Sweet Caroline

someone will finally say, with little fanfare,

Well that’s the end of your test;

I’m pleased to say you’ve passed.

You’ll find you can drive to the seaside,

reverse into cars at the supermarket,

notice that even with a satnav you still get lost

and crawl along in terror when you bring

two babies home from hospital as though

the boot is full of a thousand eggs.

Further details

Janet Hatherley, What Rita Tells Me

Trotline

You take a line, about twenty feet, unwind—

tie each end to a piece of pig iron.

At low tide, bury the ends in the sand.

You bait the hooks before the tide turns

and make sure you’re back at the next low tide.

You’ll get bass—be careful of the spines.

Often, with the changing tides, Mum had

to slip out of bed, not waking Dad—set off

with an anorak over pyjamas, to stride

through gusts of wind to crashing seas, white froth,

the deafening noise, with a bike lamp’s feeble light—

imagining a sea serpent lifting her aloft.

This way she fed us, until we grew quite

tired of bass, so she sold it to the fishmonger.

Her biggest fish, after one wild night

gained her a photo in the local paper—

a twelve and three quarter pound cod,

pride of place in the Chichester Observer.

In winter sun, Fred, our cat, followed Mum, trod

warily over seaweed, paddled in rock pools.

She looked for whelks—where are they, the little sods!

He sniffed the air as she found one, its smell rose

with the knife, a quarter fixed on a single hook.

Whelks stay on better than limpets, as it goes.

One rainy night Mum looked up, what a shock!

All the whelks so hard to find earlier—

on the breakwater, glistening in the black.

On the sea wall, most of East Drive’s neighbours

had put up fencing.  It went along the bay.

No one could walk along, cross the barbed wire.

Coming home that night Mum lost her way.

She walked around in circles, the tide had turned.

Only one place to climb up, to be okay.

Who’d know she was there, or be concerned?

The sea was coming in so fast and rough—

no one awake and waiting her return.

Further details