18th November 2020
Great waves in the bay, riding in grey;
Many horses, breaking white;
Cloud shadows indigo charging fast;
Against them, wheel of gulls so bright.
We’ve sun at last after dark dull rain:
The brightness has hurried me out.
It’s down the lane for the beach again
And never a doubt, not ever a doubt
That I need the shore and the breakers’ roars:
How I’ve needed the shore, and the breakers’ roars!
On the distant head which scowls dark red,
The waves slam hard and the spray flings high;
My eyes, they know that those breakers make
The whole cliff shake as they whiten the sky.
All across and up the Irish Sea
The Atlantic’s power is roaming free:
As heap the swells and harry the tides,
Harbours stay closed, craft safe inside.
Upon that strand feeling sharply aware,
In washes one thought, then a daydream there
Of the wind-skilled men long since passed away:
How would they have fared on such a day,
Riding it out in this gale-bucked bay?
Even a four-master with hull and spars of steel
Deep dip and broad sway, every wave would feel;
While a local ketch or coasting yawl
Would have never dared stay, would have anchor hauled.
And supposing she couldn’t have shelter found,
By hard-hearted Fate she would have been bound
To tack back and forth in a nervous round,
Ever skewing across those foam-boiling mounds.
With each tack, the crack of taut-reefed sails:
Always worry that seams and sheets might fail;
Soaked men bend to pumping, making water stream –
For those blows against her bow strain every seam.
And the crew all pray that every gust-flung gout
Won’t be the cursed one to put the cabin stove out;
For even an old salt takes it hard
When his winter supper is cold as lard!
So easy, and too true, to grow ever more afraid
Of these unhelpable souls getting further embayed…
Until, hull’s crack and drowning surf’s hiss,
Fast broken up on a strand like this.
© Christopher Jessop 2020
