作词 : Neil McDonald/Ellen Renton
 作曲 : Neil McDonald
I must be the first
Surely no one has let the cold jeg their knees
Quite happily
Lined up a ruler against the seam
Where the sky on a too-full stomach
Tucks itself into the sea
Only I see the water
Sugar-glazed to stillness
Like two taps with a spoon
Would split its lid in two
The wind that burls me
Does not feel second hand
It’s as true as a first-word
That repaints the front room it cuts through
Sounds stretched to an echo
So no one remembers how language used to land
The sand
Is out the packet new
Branded with my shoes
Maybe the sun is knackered too
Like each of us
Wrapped up in our work, and ourselves
Dreaming of being shelled by our backpacks
And swallowed by the beach
Maybe it's a parent
Too tired to keep playing
That lies through their teeth
Because all pain is small change
In the cost of wonder
Rising somewhere else while we see it sleep
Returning its light
In the nick of time
So that not a grain is lost
Not a bloat of cloud burst
Not a wave out of place
I must be the first
Everything I have
Was given to me clean
Like the sky burns just to blush my face
I have held it up
Ungloved
Crushed seaweed beneath me
Breathed in the beach until I have a new set of lungs
But I have never wiped sunrise down my jumper
To get rid of fingerprints
I never took my shoes off as I came in