3 SEPTEMBER 1994, Page 38

Sea Sonnet

The sea is made of ponds — a cairn of rain. It has an island flirting up and down like a blue hat. A boat goes in between.

Is made of rills and springs — each waternode a tiny subjectivity, the tide coordinates their ends, the sea is made.

The sea crosses the sea, the sea has hooves; the powers of rivers and the wier's curves are moving in the wind-bent acts of waves.

And then the softer waters of the wells and soakaways — hypostases of holes, which swallow up and sink for seven miles; and then the boat arriving on the island and nothing but the sea-like sea beyond.

Alice Oswald