Secrets Rising Up

It was the merest fragment 

of a glimpse — she was
insistent on that — no clear view
of what he was withdrawing
from the early morning sea.

It could have been a body, or just

a mess of wet clay, she said.

I wanted to worry at her story, as if
it was a bone to be gnawed, and I
a dog with a huge empty belly.
My hunger was a sharp knife.

But it was like trying to bite fog;

my gnashing teeth closed on nothing.

The place had us both tangled —

lonely suburb at the ocean’s edge,

miasma weighting the air. Behind each door,

behind the blank face of every house,
you could almost smell it: blood.

This is another attempt at a poem using the following word list from some Pablo Neruda poems: fragment / insistent / withdrawing / sea / clay / gnawed / empty / knife / suburb / face / house / blood. It was in fact my first attempt, but I couldn't make it work so I wrote the 'Uneasy Tanka' instead. I've done some more work on this one since, and am linking it to this week's Tuesday Platform at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.