I spoke to my brother on the phone for a bit
he’d just been down the gravel pit
to check out some fancy diving apparatus
its general operational status
and whether the neck was watertight
(thankfully that turned out alright)
he said four hundred feet down on the gravel bed
they’d sunk various things to keep you interested
like an old, redundant airforce jet
with a crayfish pilot waving from the cockpit

he asked me how the writing was going
and whether there was any money in poems
and why don’t I write about dogs instead
with an influencer’s blog on the internet
and how many books in total I’ve sold
and suddenly I felt as pressured and cold
as if it was me down there on the gravel bed
with bubbles & fish swirling round my head
and emerging through the gritty gloom
a sunken, redundant writer’s room
with a lamp, a chromebook, a desk with a drawer,
a crayfish writer with a pen in its claw