Estuary and other poems

​Estuary

I (Woodpeckers)
Winter sun lay warm
on our backs. The grass
greened by the rainstorm
still wet as a tear.
 
From a leafless copse
came a rapid knock
unechoed across
the softening air.
 
And then the quiet.
But a shy rebuke,
a distant tap, faint
compromised the calm.
 

II
There in his cassock
that sepia boy,
unsmiling—prayer book,
cathedral glow
 
behind. In his eye
a pale not-quite stare,
uncurious. Why
was he there? Now
 
he’s in the grass and
in the air, somewhere
deep, deep in the sand,
deeper in the rock.
 

III
It winds through the walls,
through different grasses,
slowly it uncoils
itself to a flow
 
towards the marshes
creeping only by
the smallest measures
gravity allows;
 
short of the beaches
finally to lie
on the dry reaches
ignored by the gulls.
 
 
IV
The darkening sky,
the gathering squall;
all of yesterday
the air was alive;
 
now storm waters fill
the waiting floodplain,
coursing down until
the weaker banks give.
 
This is where tidal
meets estuarine
carrying reddle
into the wild sea.
 

V
With a heavy heart
I took Fore Street Hill.
From the deep twilight
casting its grace song
 
out over the still
air, a hidden bird.
I listened until
calmed—but not for long;
 
things became less clear,
dumbed and sequestered
in Mackerel Square
with a heavy heart.
 

VI
February and
a late leaf dances
on the morning wind.
Moving air stalls frost
 
but there are dry fields
where warmer air goes,
there among the shards
we believe were lost
 
but are just hidden
beneath the shadows
with the forgotten
and the abandoned.
 
 
VII
Clamorous gulls call
out on the night air;
the slowing waves fall
on ancient pebbles;
 
a curve of moon there
half-hidden by cloud
low above cliffs where
by day gulls squabble.
 
Dreams end here because
we now hear aloud
our deepest thought as
murmurs on the swell.
 

Other poems

​
The wind
 
The weather forecast says the wind
turned; it comes from the east today.
This weather was yours yesterday.
The molecules that make this moving air
have chilled your skin, stroked your hair.
I turn my face to the wind
and through its chill your warmth is there.
 
 
 
The Storm
 
The slow build up to the storm deceived me.
The still air lay heavy on the roof. The roof supported
it. I was unmoved. Though apart we were each enclosed.
 
Then the other air came. It moved off the ocean,
soft breath gathered up into a roar.
Not a hat wind, a chair or a table wind - more.
 
It assailed the roof. So strong that on the ridge
the flashing lifted. So strong that the terra cotta finial,
blown from the pediment, fell
 
and smashed slates slid.
The world tilted.
 
 

The promise
 
We didn’t start with a promise. It seemed understood.
Anyway, what could we promise we hadn’t promised
to others before? It would have seemed like empty renewal
to say the same again. We lived an unspoken promise.
 
 
 
Moving Out
 
I used to think all we had was here, at home, contained.
But you gradually moved out parts of yourself like belongings;
books lent and not returned.
 
 
 
The Rescue 
 
I’d given up shouting, reconciled to being alone.
Trying to be ready; trying to get the breathing right. Not too
loud, so I’d hear if you came.
 
It was hours before they came.
 
 
 
The Roof 
 
The roof held. Through last year’s storms it held good.
Others’ didn’t. Tiles were displaced, some fell; must have leaked too.
This one was sound though: sound enough, I thought.
 
Wasps wouldn’t nest in unsound eaves.
It would need to be dry for them. They were nesting when we
first summered here and we had to kill them.
 
Sometimes I can still hear their buzz in the dry air.
 
 
Burial in the rain
 
Rain. The rain none wanted;
not the farmers whose hay
lay in the fields to dry;
nor we, gathered here as
we mumbled our goodbyes.
 
The earth’s silent embrace waited.
But there is no sure and certain hope,
no mercy here, just birdsong
and flowers and mute trees
and the rain, still the rain.