Castle Rock 1 / Western coast

 Slipping off the ring of the horizon

A new dawn breaks with the sun’s rising

Ringed by land

Like a bride’s finger

Turned around a golden band

The lipless ruff  

   

Where are my hands

Upon whose back do they fall?

The land as a lady’s side in profile

Dimples, breasts caverns measureless to man that call

And the Rock giant of flat Holm

Has touched them all

But they wore him down that knowledge

Too much wisdom has led to his destruction

Fog Horn Station 1

 The vigil kept by Fog Horn’s people

Daily, nightly they go out

To worship in the weather’s steeple

And trace the veins of the clouds

Like an atlas, a weather map of the skies

And if by mishap, or kismet

The conditions combine

Temperature, humidity, wind direction, tides

To create that fog belt, that blanket

These souls so devout to their religion

Express their faith and reveal their vision

So that others may see though with blinded eyes

And as if a miracle had occurred those who were lost are found

Those who were blind can see with their ears

Hear through the mouths that tiredly yawn

A benediction and blessing that horn sound

As clear as the Sun’s first rays through the darkness before dawn

Last Poem of Flat Holm Island

 She with her cloves so black

She bitter crow, tooth by claw

The rattling steam cooker

Boiling the red hot hob

Hobbling as horses hooves

Clattering shore

 

Those steely stolen feet of stone

Clabbered the pebble dash dawn

Sorted in the graves

Of fish, rolling out the crease of sea

Ironing flat the deep

 

The bees of sleep have sung and hum

The waxwork town of men

All fixed are they

Henna brushed the tattoo lanes

Which wild willows blow

Shutters sound of shop door bells

Cling, clang ring of moneyed tills

Billowed bills and dollared dills

That faintly smell of sea sprayed sills

And that joyful, lawful wind

Which judges not least itself be judged

Just moronically mows down the morrow in moans

Dredges cats from alleys in calls from bins

Winds dogs barks around lamp posts

Their authors and owners

Trailing as cod fish on a leash

Clasping gawp gobbling as turkeys at the goblet air

Of homespun hamlets and heavy Irish hair

Just blandishments of bandicoots

And boron rods of care

In the cooker of his dreams

And machinations of a mind’s lair

 

Just hag the egg men

And hog the sea weed

Dredge the cock spurs from out the chicken feed

Chafe the chaffinch and fetch the Magpie

Palaeolithic the mega myth before I die

Follow the saintly swan too all white bread

The skatey scanty sea of scurvy hunger

And weevil whales that bore through

The biscuit of the big belly jelly deep

As leviathanic gloves that slip the silky thin night

From the dread grey sea

The shimmering shining sun as a smoky fish house glade

  Hung up to dry in a witch watchful sky

The sun is Gaol and Heights goosing by

The chimney pot pig sties

And roofs of ribbon rotted warmth that ties

All of death’s cold down to earth

Birding

 Can you catch an oyster with an oyster catcher?

Or shank a red, redshank

Can you shell the shell of a shell duck?

Or dun a Dunnock to his bank

And are you the one to witness the whim of a Whimbrel?

Or take cool turns with an Arctic Tern

Oh please tell me what Birding is in the end all about

Will you buzz a buzzard out on a panel show of ornithological knowledge?

To be cock of the walk, rank high in the pecking order of chickens in the run

While the sun is out

Will you gan at a Gannet, like you may gander a goose

Or might you take a puff at a puffin

Before with a sly smile turn him loose?

Might you throw a wad at a wader

Or take a snipe at a snipe

With your lens he is in the eye of the beholder

But do you see an eye for an eye

Or a tooth for a tooth

Can you turn over every stone in your search for a Turnstone?

Will you turn tail and run from a gull

Or gull at him back through the clear light of truth

May you lessen his black back?

Simply by painting him grey like the weather

Or fledge a fletch of his juvenile feathers

In the arrows of a Robin’s Hood

To hoodwink a Starling who sparred with a Sparrow

Tell me kindly if you’ve understood

Did you put the black bird down in your little black book?

Or put down the lark as a clown with a stern black look?

Did you flinch at a finch when he came around?

Was it you who took the voice from the mute swan?

Do any of you really have a choice in your wan?

Or like the grey goose do your clothes have some use?

You may hide in your hides, ride down your rides

Or follow the moth and the fly

For an insect is a gift to the very fast swift

As a wood pigeon is

To the peregrine or the Lord of the Sky

And not forgetting the crow

Who you too well may know

For his Corvidian cousin the Raven

Has driven you stark raving Mad

With his gang of dark vandals

Who are no strangers to scandals

In amongst the nests and eggs of the coot

And should you hold a full suit

Or a good gambit of feathery friends in your hand

Please keep them safe and

Sound advice is this :You may remember it is best

To believe you are blest

And unlike the cuckoo who intrudes on a nest

For the others' eggs out he will push

But know without doubt

Your life is not worth a short snout

For a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Buteo

Buteo, Buteo

Wherefore art thou Buteo?

On what holy wooded hedge

Where you make our hooded ledge

And wherefore do you fly?

Forever a convict of the sky

And conviction yes

More is the less

As with auspices make your pledge

Your blood bond to swear by

Vow your vows

Bow your heads

Here comes the vouchsafe

Of your lives

Give money, give roses, poses of heather

Black is the beak, brown is the feather

The air in some torpid atmosphere

Breaks like breakers of a wild sea

Snapping like a belt of leather

Sends up vapours

On whose thermals see thee

Oh how grubby are the praying hands

When they come together

Beneath wedding bands

And marriage yet between

Sky and land

Though thou art unknowable times of sand

For where do you come from?

Who is your mother?

Thy father is every falcon

Every hunter back to the age of man

But how many mothers can

Give birth to your skill

Your art is the destroyer

How learnt thou to kill?

Who taught you? Treacherous sky and wind

Tempest belly was thy womb

But land that keeps your harboured pledge

Vouchsafe in him

Your meat and bread

Father provider to a son born of the air

Always crossing the sun

But what cares the sun for poor Buteo Buteo?

He is forever a traveller

In search of his carrion loot

In search of dead gold

When the sun is treasure chest

Enough for this pirate

Who sails blue pastures

What more wealth can be searched for?

When wisdom is the treasure the sun has in store

And he but transmuted

The vessel of nature’s law

Sign giver and guide all those

Who worship him and him adore

Yet his auspice given, rewards

Neither love nor hate

But like the majesty of heaven

Reigns down equal upon those from His pearly gate

Questions Where AM I?

 On what enlightened bay

Do the tides of time descend?

On how sweet an afternoon

Of light astray

Can the scarlet pimpernel festoon?

Where do the oysters catch?

And where do the gulls loom?

In the fasted Lapis sky

Beneath the hay making sun

How does the bracken grow?

How weaves the stinging nettle?

Through what thistle do the finches whistle?

Or over what cliff is heard

The peregrines steaming, screaming kettle

How comes it that I am here?

For to tell what enters mine ear?

And why for do the black birds mew?

Or the crow caw, caw

Or why do the rabbits run, lapis lapidary

Lapin lapping the blue from the sky

The yellow from the chicken sun

The silver from the harvest moon

The white from the clouds undone

How comes it the temperate chain lies unbroken?

The wind to cool, the sun to heat

How is it that words left unspoken?

Best describe this nature’s beat

Ode to a Buzzard

Oh Buzzard

Harbinger of death

Augury man above

On your miracle, spiracle of breath

What did the Roman’s make of you?

You man of War, of ides

The soothsayers look up to see you crossing the sun

Of their dark days

Skull as a battle warriors helmet, visor down

Omen days

Buteo, buteo

Occipital holes, below heavy brows

Beyond is the world

Within the oracle of her mind

The subuteo men go walking beneath

And she is like a goddess

Who holds their belief

Come visit this isle of the dead

A suitable repose

To make your hunting ground

And roses’ bed

You are always above roses and poppies

Scavenger, scanner

Of starvation’s horizon

The hunger circumference of your vision

Which fades with the sunset

And its ring is set by the stone

Of the moon.