Hi Mike,
Really liked this. I think it evokes "point where vision and imagination
meet" very well - like Colin said, I think it manages to be easy on the ear
while hinting at something mysterious and only half-grasped in the
background.
I've read Colin's suggested changes and thought they worked well, but then I
thought the original worked well too!
Regards,
Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Horwood [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 21 January 2004 09:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: New sub: Bream


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Bream

If I concentrate hard enough, I will see it,
that day like a Chinese watercolour
with grey trees in a pale mist,
mist and shapes merging in the distance,
and two figures by a lake.
A silent day with blank spaces,
as comfortless as going barefoot on the shore.
And what seems like stillness to a casual glance
a closer observation reveals 
as slight and intermittent stirring
among the dripping boughs,
like the suspicion of movement underwater
at the point where vision and imagination meet.

By dint of careful contemplation, to grasp
and store each hard-won glimpse
of shade and change of tone that slides
beneath the flash of surface light,
I gradually draw the shape of a large bream
out of the lake´s dark depths
into the shallows beside the jetty.
It drifts among the stems,
sifts the soft silt of past generations
of water plants for nourishment,
sucks and blows yellow ochre clouds
and leaves these signs behind;
pock marks in the mud, lines
where its tail has dragged.





Mike