Lanzarote

The Never Visited Lanzarote

*

You want to take your camera,

your wide angle lens

shoot black sand in Lanzarote

I want to snorkel for the first time

burn into my retina the colours of fish,

The names of which I have no memory for:

grouper, barracuda, angelshark, rays;

flowers who retreat at the brush of a gloved finger

*

You want to explore Lanzarote mountains

A view finder for company, a camera

Knocking into your ribs gently with each step

Your footsteps on its lunar surface pausing

As you tilt your body to capture the rocky texture

Eerie, Martian, your stomach full of hot ash

As real as the taste of rough alcohol

*

You see light like it is a telescope,

All focus and beautiful, sending sight

To the sea, coral reef teeming, an octopus snaking

In the water like the lava flow snaked itself

into a tunnel, burnt the four miles long passage Atlantic

*

You see my face like it is a source of sun

Your skin is tanned as the people who sprawl  

On white Lanzarote beaches,

on golden sand, that we have never visited.