Tide surge before storm

crooning spindrift-scalped crests

            wave-song on bladderwrack

 

 

Troy’s northern outpost

            crumbles before Embleton

No horse only neighing turbulence though ruined stone

 

Thoughts are captured        mind set free

A feather on discovery’s trigger

 

I am here to wash coal

 

A fisherman on a salt road knows

eye-true is not truth

The eye no god

                        but maker of many goddesses

 

            Here water’s rub on land almost recent

upon furnace-fried dolerite etched in brachiopods

                        compressed crinoids and unknowable time

 

 

 

 

The day is young

A baby in pain

The world shrinks around this

 

I am here to wash coal

that stokes a fire

today              everyday

blistered from a bitter sea its burning

a pulse of place upon the soul

 

To leave yet never leave

                        a mark of impact

 

A meteor crater of wonder

its magnitude enlarged       those

dolerite fossils beneath a hand lens

 

Viewed at ground level

Marram is bamboo

nearby rock Fuji

 

The Tokaido Road finds its way

to northern England

 

Not far a hostelry

mixes music and food

                        but no geisha

 

Gannets stab the sea

repeatedly                 folding wings

an instant before

            They are eyes for fishermen

 

Cowboy dolphins herd a shoal

yip yip yip heading off mavericks

 

 

On the pub table a butterflied-herring

arrives from Craster

            unrecognised                        kippered

                        its silver lessened to bronze

                        by alchemy                It tastes good

                        and turns the stomach

                                                                        golden

 

After food conversation rests

                                    over untidy plates

 

It’s down to how things are heard

            Twist & Shout

 

The way language works its broad-based ziggurat

stepped in location’s voice

            utters land and whispers weather

 

 

a lowing dairyman 

            gurgling river-man

                                    a clattering spanner-man

The tune comes through muscle-strong

in rolled-up sleeves of working words

 

 

Bright morning draws moodily on afternoon

                        tugging night

 

There is brattle over a gurelly sea

A sharp wind yanks the turned tide over carrs

swirling water into tight barrels

 

Darkness crashes Dunstanburgh’s walls

            I am here to wash coal

 

 

The day is young

A baby in pain

The world shrinks around this