Discovered in a rock pool

A star-shaped object rising up

out of the water – five

wavering arms, five

spokes of a chariot wheel, five

curved cylinders, at their centre

a cluster of grey barnacles, small pearls, a silver light,

the water that drips from them

heavy with salt, oxidized

incrustations. A star tiara

from a drowned mermaid, the wheel

of some vast chariot washed up.

And, as it breaks the surface, this sharp sudden

fragrance like plants left

too long in narrow vases, the water

like urine drained out of dried twigs.

The wheel is a ghost of a wheel.

The fiery chariot’s return to

the kingdom of salt. And everything

shrinks and is less than a token

miniature apple, a walnut placed

as a skull-shaped offering on an

altar to placate the goddess of devouring.

Effigies stored in a rock pool.

This is surely someone’s

childhood not mine. Such simple things

might be placation or destruction. Starfish

or a galaxy intact

as its detritus. Burnt out. Cooling off,

cooling off in a solution

of brine and midday sun.

-- Whom do you seek?

The woman at the centre of the starfish-wheel asks me.

-- I am after another life.

Peter Boyle