I have assumed my watch – shifted
from southern shore of sandy beach
and rock pools under chalk cliff-face
to this northern border where the shingle
is restrained by weed-greened wooden groynes.
The horizon towards the west
is possessed by an ancient isle –
an alien ghetto I am told
where for many generations
natives lived in isolation.
And east, a strange sight, thirty spikes
spin blades – white reapers of the wind
not of the grain. The souls that fly
this coast appear as pairs of crows,
blackheaded gulls and cormorants
which dive down, stay beneath the waves
but never drown. The berths are perched
along the slope in bright array
but most are shuttered, barred and locked.
As summer slips into autumn
few seem to hear or to obey
the call to sentinel and dream.

Black as the coal which mined their lives,
Black as the dust which lined their lungs,
Black as the night which filled their days,
Black plumage, legs, feet, beaks and eyes.

Scruffily clad in workaday rags
but iridescent as sea glitter.
Restless, they scan the estuary
for barges carrying Black wealth.

They tread the shingle at tide’s ebb,
eyes pick, beaks peck at each Black pebble.
They spread their wings in stunted flight.
They hop the slope with hunkered heads.

Condemned to caw when once they choired,
haunted by caged and cavernous dreams:
floods of faces, bared gleaming teeth,
laid out props, bleak Black screams.

I wrapped my heart in a cotton shroud,
I wound my heart in a silk cocoon,
I gave my heart to the carrion crows
who flew my heart to a lace day moon.

The moon sank into a bruise-tinged haze,
my heart slipped into the cold cold waves.
The current twisting from flow to ebb
carried my heart away away.

I trapped my sorrow behind panes of glass,
I hid my body in a pinewood shed,
I pooled my tears for marygold drink,
I stifled my sobs in spider webs.

But a money-spinner comforted me,
crawled my hand as I scrawled my hurt,
taught my lament to the screaming gulls,
scattered my anguish to pecking culvers.

I will bathe my face in the morning dew,
I will pinch off fear to feed crane flies,
I will sprinkle self-pity along the shingle,
skimming pebbles as anger dives.

My skin will absorb a radiant sunset,
my body will bask in crepuscular rays,
I will wade in the shallows when cats’ paws thrill,
I will dance with the moon’s corona display.

My heart will return when autumn is dead,
once winter is sifted and spring has sprung,
my heart will stir in its shrouding cocoon,
bloody my body, release my tongue.

My heart will return as a cormorant
lumbering silently over the sea,
oiled and preened and cruciate,
embracing others and saving me.

All day a jubilant sun
chases a sliver of moon.

A Turneresque haze
playing with water colours
hides the horizon.

The advancing, chanting sea
dances with the shingle’s beat.

Two swimmers appear
as aberrant white horses
foaming the water.

Retired jacketed greyhounds
jog with jacketed owners.

A breeze thieves the time,
three aging dandelions
loosen their fleeces.

Single file, synchronised flap
towards sunset, geese fly past.