Title: The Unprepared Mind

Author: Tom Weston

In: Sport 32: Summer 2004

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, December 2004

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 32: Summer 2004

Tom Weston — The Unprepared Mind

page 231

Tom Weston

The Unprepared Mind

The western island is furthest from land,
a place of shrubs and grasses, a holy place devoid

of adultery. The women fasten their clothes
with the bones of seabirds. With such things

they can soar at will. The neck of goose
is a chaste shoe, a lightness of feet, rising over

the marbled expanse of sponge and moss,
like flying. These things have been seen.

The boat returns. For them, the first journey.
One awakes, in the light of morning, at land

wholly new to her, the same ocean, same rocks,
a familiarity utterly foreign. How the shrubs

have become as large as buildings, higher even.
Trees, she is told. And she is amazed,

they grow to such a height above plants and
they hold us when we walk in them.