Composed on the same morning as the previous poem, May 4th.
8th May 2021
I had intended a fast straight track across the strand;
But now I must doff my pack,
Fish out a sack,
And go grackling across the cobbles.
For here’s a small cornucopia of wrack:
Sand-free seaweed, already half-dried.
Garden nutrition, gift of Neptune,
Which will flavour September’s potatoes to perfection.
No grudge, thus,
Against any stoop of a hundred;
Nor hardly one bad word when I stoneslither,
While the occasional entangled rope piece little irks me.
And could there be more uplifting company
Than passage whimbrels?
They probe ahead of me by only a score of trusting yards,
Seeming happy to think this Our Shore for the now.
All the while,
The Atlantic orates its power:
Proclaiming waves,
Like actors in everlasting procession.
All take such loud-applauded bows as they roll downstage
Into the white-glaring footlights of the surf:
For each, the one star turn…
And, straight away, their final exit.
© Christopher Jessop 2021