{"id":1001,"date":"2013-08-15T16:57:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T16:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2014-12-22T20:38:32","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T20:38:32","slug":"my-life-as-a-coble-for-da-a-poem-by-marie-marshall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/my-life-as-a-coble-for-da-a-poem-by-marie-marshall\/","title":{"rendered":"My life as a coble (for DA). A Poem by Marie Marshall."},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

I examine my bones, tibia, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

fibula, made new each morning, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

as things of wonder <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

to crawl my fingers over;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

* <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

it has been this way since birth, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

a boat launching, clinker-built, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

ribs and thighbones my strakes, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

that way I can be beached <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

high on life;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

humerus, ulna, radius, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

from keel to hog to apron, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

from garboard to sheer, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

the face of each land is beveled, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

and the resulting, exulting song <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

is the little tremor of the water <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

as I force through;
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember the day <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I was first beached, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

but it must have been with <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

the groaning of new planks \u2013 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

they say boats, before they\u2019re built <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

exist in a putative sea, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

that it is the karma <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

of the best trees to know chainsaw, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

plane, and ocean, to be water-tight <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

without caulking, to be painted <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

red-below-white-below-black, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

to have a girl\u2019s name; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I love wriggling cargoes of fish <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

and hate fire;
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I look down on the carvel-built <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

with their oakum and pitch, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

the fast, twisting Lateen whores \u2013 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

always have, always will; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

tarsals and carpals <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

have taken on the torque <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

of the currents and undertow, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I tack ceaselessly, new rope coiled, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

uncoiled, coiled while I see <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

white houses cling to cliffs, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

white birds describe the sky; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

drifted in, drifted out, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

harboured on a dayglo ball, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

bumped and scratched, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

the slap of halyard on mast <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

playing amongst the mathematical <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

music of the marina; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

such times of inertia, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

barely lifting, barren <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

in the bob of flotsam, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

held against the times <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

of chop and roll; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

there is a god of cobles, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

half-boatbuilder, half-commodore, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

that\u2019s who answers the marine radio; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

sternum, vertebrae, no heart, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

no soul [to speak of], so <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

when I am beached the last time <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be a perch for gulls, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

no shame in that, no shame <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

to have blistered paint <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

and a faded name, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

no shame at all, nor to forget <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

my mother who was a tree, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

my father who was a rove-punch; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

the white houses are still there, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

voiceless beyond the rattling diesel <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

and the rasp of tide against the cliffs, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

the land is still here, and each day <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

a different sea reflects a different sky, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

there\u2019s no shame in that; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

the white, broken wake, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

the forgotten messages it writes, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

there is no shame in that either; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

up and down, up and down, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

ankle to skull, woman to girl, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

new, pine-smelling timber <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

to beached hull, there is no shame <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

in any of this; <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

sit and sing in your accents, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

tell stories, I won\u2019t hear them, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

no shame, I won\u2019t want to, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

it\u2019s my life as a coble, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

not a telling and a hearing of stories, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

and that\u2019s a fact.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 
\n <\/strong><\/strong>
\n\"Marie<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

Marie Marshall is an Anglo-Scottish author, poet and editor. Her first collection of poems, Naked in the Sea, was published in 2010 and reviewed in Sonnetto Poesia that same year, and her second collection, I am not a fish, in 2013. Since 2005 she has published over two hundred poems, mainly in magazines and anthologies, but the most extraordinary places in which a poem of hers has appeared include on the wall of a caf\u00e9 in Wales, and etched into an African drum at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her first novel, Lupa, was published in 2012. She is well-known in Scotland for her macabre short stories. Her web site can be found at mairibheag.com. Of writing poetry and sonnets she says, \u201cI did not start writing until 2004, so I am very much a twenty-first century writer. I write anything, any kind of poetry that I feel the urge to tackle \u2015 sonnets included.\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

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  I examine my bones, tibia, fibula, made new each morning, as things of wonder to crawl my fingers over; * it has been this way since birth, a boat launching, clinker-built, ribs and thighbones my strakes, that way I can be beached high on life; * humerus, ulna, radius, from keel to hog to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170,43],"tags":[342,198,343,341,18,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3287,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions\/3287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}