Marloes Sands, yesterday afternoon.
Friday 22nd December 2023
And why, the washing gratefully nor’wester dried,
Would you not now stride out today?
Walking towards the sea’s roar
Until you can see it, watch it, closer feel
Each greentumbling into white.
Yourself shore-arrived,
Cobbleslipped haste down to meet that foam,
Peruse the new tide’s arrivals, pick over and choose:
For shoulders, turn and turn about,
Can only carry so much!
So, wisely deciding not to swim in that stramash,
Homeward steadily up though it is steep;
While beside us, in the clifflee, gulls slipstream home to Skomer
Craftyriding effortless against the wind –
Which, if a machine ever learnt that, true human ingenuity.
All the while the bed-readying Sun, now grey-hidden,
Dramatically announces that it is about to dip into
That narrow russet gap of clear horizon sky
With a silent firework show of fierce cutdowns,
Stabby as steelcutter oxy flames…
As and just after our star departs this evening,
All the sky and everything under is startled amber, so richly
We must break from last-light chores to wonder, whence this colour?
And then a friend surmises: from Iceland, on the polar wind,
Where wakes a new volcano.
© Christopher Jessop 2023
