Avalon

To the Metropolitan Police Force, London:

the asylum gates are locked and chained, but undone

by wandering thoughts and the close study of maps.

So from San Francisco, patron city of tramps,

I scribble this note, having overshot Gloucester

by several million strides, having walked on water.

City of sad foghorns and clapboard ziggurats,

of snakes-and-ladders streets and cadged cigarettes,

city of pelicans, fish bones and flaking paint,

of underfoot cable-car wires strained to breaking point    ...

I eat little — a beard of grass, a pinch of oats — 

let the salt-tide scour and purge me inside and out,

but my mind still phosphoresces with lightning strikes

and I straddle each earthquake, one foot either side

of the fault line, rocking the world’s seesaw.

At dusk, the Golden Gate Bridge is heaven’s seashore:

I watch boats heading home with the day’s catch

or ferrying souls to glittering Alcatraz,

or I face west and let the Pacific slip

in bloodshot glory over the planet’s lip,

sense the waterfall at the end of the journey.

I am, ever your countryman, Ivor Gurney.