Forecasts was written as a collaborative piece. Laura Elliott, who also completed the Poetry MA, has written a corresponding poem. View her work.
FORECASTS
We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air
– Evangelista Torricelli
I.
I’m trying to write
a film about different
kinds of wind because
really we’re all dying
to be air Today
I took field recordings
of agonal breathing listen
my voice is hidden
in the track underneath
Wind itself is deaf
and dumb only interrupting
matter such as microphones
can vocalise an airstream
I am difficult to
talk it makes me
whispers we drift like
Subtitles are being considered
The script is forming
itself silently I’m shooting
the sky to establish
a setting it opens
on a big blue
yawn a voice-over
carries over the mistrals
III.
all day long I score soughs
and rustles creating dialects of air
You’d smile to hear blusters fold
over into form thick autumn thermals
plumped into howling vowels We two
both learn to purr notating twists
as whistles skim the chimney This house
rattles its emptiness on the windows
I often read your poem aloud
lift and circulate the words listen
for inner similarities to their meaning
so much warm air so close
the soft drone of your vocables
V.
filter coffee service stations where nobody
speaks and the rain blisters windows
I’ve been sleeping in the car
and it’s been aspirin for days
There are messages on your side
residual questions traced in glass wiper-
blades drag off-beat against silent
wind-farms lunatic arms My mornings
turn upon the centre of your
air-conditioned letters tell me where
did you sleep last night We expand
against the air an unending series
of replacements we call this language
shiver when the cold wind blows
VII.
I hold my breath
after lightning and wait
for it to return
thunder Please know this
is exactly as I
found it white balloon
in a field with
nothing else little lung
in a furrow bobs
so soft in leeward
breeze Do you remember
the car game puffing
our chests and pinching
our noses we drove
at night through tunnels
blood swimming in our
ears those rumbling tyres
the blinking lights our
beating hearts I’m trying
to picture the world
before we were taught
about looking but everything
framed returns A balloon
in a field tumbles
towards a knotted patch
of brambles Thunder claps
IX.
You always took good care
of pot-plants and plot curves
Things have been calm and grey
Remember the house where
wisteria whispered
in through open windows
the pink violet vines’
breath on your back smoke-
like after night-swimming
There was something I meant
to say to you something
about currents or waves
but I often lose track
of the simpler facts Wind
waving the wind along
the tonnes of air under
which we are all submerged
and our small conversions