David I. Hughes is a writer based in West Cornwall, UK. His poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous international journals and anthologies. Recent honours include the October Project Grand Prize for Poetry and the LitFox Poetry Book Award semi-final. His debut novel ‘The Listener,’ a work of speculative fiction, was published in 2025.
i. The Shark
The fishermen knew it first.
Not angels in the clouds.
Angels in the boat.
Lou pei ange, they called it,
wings folded flat against the seafloor,
hauled in before dawn,
hands bleeding,
wings tangled in rope.
They paraded it through the streets:
Come see the bad beast
that breaks our nets.
ii. The Saint
The other story floats above.
A girl, a martyr,
her body carried by angels
across the sea,
landing exactly here.
She rests now
in the cathedral,
still arriving.
iii. The Bay
From Cannes to Monaco,
the coast parades its glittering towns,
but this curve of water keeps
a different secret.
It does not choose
between what saves us
and what feeds us.
Bay of Angels.
The water asks nothing
but to hold what arrives—
the shark, the saint,
the miracle of arriving
where you are meant to be.
The Flower Market
Cours Saleya
The flower market opens before the sun,
the old women arriving with their baskets,
their chairs scraping stone, their voices
calling across the square like birds.
Matisse painted this light,
the same light that falls on the courgette flowers.
First the blossoms—roses, lilies, mimosa, flowers
piled like fabric, yellow as the sun.
Then the fruit, the olives, the cheese, the light
spilling over tomatoes in wooden baskets,
the Niçoise naming the colours like birds
before the tourists arrive with their voices.
Socca from the copper pan, the vendor’s voice
cutting through the chatter: chaud, les fleurs!
The old men play pétanque like birds
waiting for the season of the sun.
The wives fill their string bags, their baskets
heavy with the morning, heavy with light.
Chagall bought his vegetables here. The light
held still for him, a blue so deep it had no voice.
Matisse filled his baskets
with the same flowers,
the same sun,
the same wings of birds.
Now I stand where they stood, a tourist with a voice
that does not belong, but the light
does not ask where I am from. The sun
does not care. The flowers,
the baskets,
the birds—
they keep being themselves, keep being the old Nice,
the one that was here before the hotels, before the voices
of strangers filled the baskets
with photographs, not flowers.
But still the sun
rises, still the birds
arrive, still the old women unfold their chairs, their voices
worn as the stones, steady as the light,
and the sun fills their baskets, fills the flowers,
fills the birds.
Apollo and the Men of Light
Place Masséna
Apollo sits above the fountain,
green with weather,
horses lifting from the basin
as if the sea were trying
to enter the square.
He has been here
longer than the crowds
who photograph him
without looking up.
At dusk
the men of light appear,
balanced on poles
above the paving stones,
changing colour—
blue, red, green, violet—
unsure what kind of evening
they belong to.
Apollo does not change.
Water moves around him
the same way it moved yesterday
and a hundred years ago.
The men of light
switch themselves on at night
and disappear by morning.
Apollo remains.
The fountain remains.
The square changes.
The god of the sun
and the men made of electricity
share the same air.
If they spoke,
Apollo might say:
I was made to last.
And the men of light:
We were made to change.
The square keeps both.
Poetry in this post: © David I. Hughes
Published with the permission of David I. Hughes