Cityscape

I have a word for it —

the way the surface waited all day

to be a silvery pause between sky and city —

which is elver.

And another one for how

the bay shelved cirrus clouds

piled up at the edge of the Irish Sea,

which is elver too.

The old Blackrock baths

have been neglected now for fifty years,

fine cracks in the tiles

visible as they never were when

shouted Harry Vernon as

he dived from the highest board

curving down into salt and urine

his cry fading out

through the half century it took

to hear as a child that a glass eel

had been seen

entering the seawater baths at twilight —

also known as elver —

and immediately

the word begins

a delicate migration —

a fine crazing healing in the tiles —

the sky deepening above a city

that has always been

unsettled between sluice gates and the Irish Sea

to which there now comes at dusk

a translucent visitor

yearning for the estuary.