ON STRUMBLE HEAD
A scribble the shape of ghost emotion
locked in a dark of its own
eroded by slow dissipations.
Attenuated solidity, it dusts and fragments,
worn to grit and feathers – like the scoop of ravens
haunting the far and airless void of fractured cliff.
.
So it is the sun shines down this stooping lane.
So it is the sky stretches out cloud as thin as yesteryear
down to a sea-wet sunset.
.
This scribble root of gorse, buried and unburied
in a wall of lost time, scuffed by sheep,
peeled back by tooth of buck rabbit
and the hungry fox who is a poet for worms
and small chances in the night.
.
We slope down, we slope down,
a curved limb and a slow-motion fall.
The land reaches out, reaches out,
so in love it is with the distant perfect horizon.
The whitest lighthouse walls, a geometric parable of steps,
a blessing and a curse of isolation.
Here, it says,
not here, it says,
you are going, have gone,
astray.
.
This tower of the last word, reaching upwards in rain and spume.
A dancer, as a tree is, as a gorse bush is,
straining against gravity and used to failing beautifully
with grace and a small distance in the smile,
a cool distance where perfection lingers before it melts.
.
A ringing landscape song: thin lanes,
long and running bravely to thin air.
Dead ends, dead endings where the ravens wait
soaring up the world’s edges,
soaring up to taste the distant crashing,
testing the resilience of time against
the pump of heartbeats.
.
Small things matter, so close we are here to edges,
where the wind throws all opposition down
and the pastel fragile seasons
dress and undress eternal moments.
There is a transparency in the air
above Strumble Head, a wind-blown kiss,
a word of farewell.
—
