Along Hunstanton cliffs a ways, a little way
from the fallen slabs covered with a weave
of fossil tubes, where each day sinks it twice
in waves, the iron spine of a boat - just the keel.
What's left's so narrow - like a bizarre
long canoe for some troll tribe - all else
washed away or salvaged scrap long gone.
Well, C had a go at painting it back then,
five autumn's past, from a summer photo,
when the light was good and the sea
took it's glaucescence from blue skies.
Almost Fauvist then it shone, so she daubed
and hung it, till she left, in our living-room.
In this cuckoo time, when tunes are changed,
again, I found my eyes on its sinking under tide,
playing my memories on their strings;
yet drugged with the heroin of time's long glide
just seemed like pictures in a real coal fire,
these waves, flames of white over the black grate,
stark in the gloom till only a line of iron jags...
I'm minded of an ancient lower-jaw -
jags of tooth-holes serrating the old bone,
say, from the Olduvai Gorge*,
found by Professors Leakey -
jawbone of a relationship.
...........................
*Somewhere along the line we are refined from Hominid to Hominin (not homonym - or Homo-Ninny ;) - yet we were all hominid, 'for 'a that'.
* From Wiki: 'Olduvai Gorge, or Oldupai Gorge, in Tanzania ,is one of the most important sites in the world; it has proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches across East Africa, it is about 48 km (30 mi) long, and is located in the eastern Serengeti Plains in the Arusha Region, not far, about 45 kilometres (28 miles), from Aaetoli, another important archaeological site of early human occupation. The British/Kenyan paleoanthropologist-archeologist team, Mary and Louis Leakey, established and developed the excavation and research programs at Olduvai Gorge which achieved great advances of human knowledge and world-renowned status.'
