"Slack" by Lawrence Sail

"Slack" - a poem by Lawrence Sail from his collection "Songs of the Darkness" - read by Janet Harris. All royalties from sales of "Songs of the Darkness" will be given to Trusts for African Schools, a registered charity which acts as a conduit for money raised in the UK to be sent out to some of the poorest schools in Africa. More information is available at - www.trustsforafricanschools.org . "Slack" by Lawrence Sail After the long etceteras of the flooding tide, before the surf rattles back through the beach's knucklebones, the sea's fallow is as still as the twist of milk which Vermeer's milkmaid tips slowly and for ever from a jug to a shallow bowl. The fishing-boats winched to the top of the shore for winter lie awkwardly stern on to the steely horizon, stranded in the damp acoustic of an amnesty declared between past and future, where all storms approach as smothered thunder. Calm of a kind - but unnerving, like the serene gaze of Piero's pregnant madonna, whose hand resting on her belly must already feel, above the unbroken waters, the stirrings of a mortal god, the hard place of the skull.