IN HIS FIFTH COLLECTION of poems, Chris Emery explores the nature of wonder in its various forms of awe, reflection and the marvellous. The poems range from the absurd to the historical, the comic and fantastical – dropping us into stories and places we never quite expect; often viewing the everyday through a surprising lens…

Christmas is coming

Our dreams are made upon this ship:
400 metres of red containers twist on deck,
its webcams show half-lit floors;
no one moves through any doors.
Slow miles. Iodine. Grey études.
Two chefs in whites broil lamb and beef
to feed the midnight crew
who never loved, who never knew.
One full moon and planets mid-Atlantic.
Sea lanes galvanise the captain’s sober years.
A seaman FaceTimes his leukaemic sister.
A seaman pierces a blister.
All our stowed Christmases are grinding
towards Felixstowe or Immingham
through colossal bronze dawns:
a ship with nitrates for our lawns,
crazy plastics or rah-rah skirts –
the things that truly matter –
stowed in this floating church for us.
This is the ship of human urges
and we are its surface for things,
practising each sort of happiness
watching for a simple eastern star
and paradise from China.

from the collection Wonder (Salt, £10.99)

Photo: M/V ZIM Kingston at anchor off British Columbia in November 2021, after losing 109 containers overboard and suffering an on-board fire that burned for five days. Gordon Leggett/Wikimedia Commons

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Chris Emery lives in North Norfolk and works in publishing. Wonder is published in paperback by Salt.
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Also by Chris Emery on Bookanista: Origins