Deep Waters: Melancholia

On Tuesday, Benjamin Morris opened our Deep Waters project with The Thin Brown Line, his account of a visit to Barataria Bay. We continue this series, which features work written in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, with a new poem from the English poet Dan Grace.
was born in Leytonstone, east London, and has been migrating northwards ever since. He is currently settled in Sheffield and, when not writing, he works in his local library. His first published poem appeared in Dark Mountain: Issue 1.

The skin of my mood
is easily pierced.
A dead bee splayed
on a laminate floor,

as ungainly in death as in life.
Carried out into the light,
on the step,
its curled abdomen

cradled in paper, a full stop,
to punctuate the break
between the animate
and the not.

And a bramble cut
stretched across my knuckle
splits wide open
as I watch

a young sparrow at the feeder
eyed by the crow,
the poppies blood red petals
spilled by the wind

and beneath it all an excess
of bile, black bile, rising
somewhere
out in deep water.

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