If Spring has a season here,
she plays second fiddle to the tell of tides,
as the sun is the moon's lieutenant,
in these little scarified wildernesses,
veined with curlew and gull,
pecked and tracked mud creeks.
Nor has it helped Spring's case
that sea defences have been renovated:
long stretches of bank compacted and clean cut,
collateral of grasses and wildflowers -
only Alexanders are re-colonizing
from the fieldward side.
Further along, by the fence
overlooking the reedy, sedgy lake,
of the Hun, where it broadens to the sea-gate
chickweed and purple dead-nettle
announce themselves.
It will be May before the saltmarsh meadow
is blushed by nodding sea-pink,
buzzed by early bees,
carolled by the ghosts of skylarks.
Along the boardwalk bluff,
it's dandelions who smile.
A beige day by sea,
until, as we sit,
eating sandwiches and apples,
sky rolls out some intervals of blue,
for sea to match,
then waves green in the sun,
while the far-off line of windmills
shines bone-white before fading
back to smudges on the end of skywash.
Behind us high tide has raked out
then pulled seven pines to their doom.
They lie, some toppled and
some dying upright on their mats of roots;
and all along, the dunes have been ripped
back to vertical cliffs.
We trudge along and lie in
secondary dune lee
out of onshore wind,
watching an emperor's struggles
to fly his will on fragile wings bent back
and blown off-course.
Here is a stripey dune snail,
and a thin matting over sand holds the tiniest
of blue ochre-hearted flowers.
Here she is, the early forget-me-not.
I lie next Spring's precious heart with
the solace of the marram mapping gusts,
in waves of sway, ruffle and shiver,
beyond musings or memories.
..
YOU ARE READING
Bare Shouldered
Poetry"The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this - in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again without wings and with all [the] horror of a bare shouldered Creature...
