Laugharne Mussels cling to the salt-cracked rock. He labours within the boathouse, clipping the lines of faded roses, uprooting rusted bracken, weeding out the familiar until hearing the poem shiver with rhythms. But not enough. He bins another page. A scatter of sweet wrappings litter the floor where a bottle lingers to nurse the words out of him. To drink is to destroy. Yet how he thirsts to play naming games, to spill his sullen art over the marsh. Let winter waves rage, let the hush ferment a druid's brew and pump his veins to climb that hill blistered with autumn fern, and below let the church slate and stone glisten with a congregation of crisp meaning. It will be enough to slake his poet's thirst. An aubergine cloud broods over a boathouse in Laugharne. He writes. He drinks.
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