Flicking over white rock, mussel grass prune relics and sardine stone through the Twin Pillars of Elizabeth,
past the Kentish-green river Darenth in August or July
homing to a pattern of stars, trawl of the sun, fields of earth's core
Atlantic salmon run, climbing Thames, a scent of gravel in hill water
leaping the salmon ladders lined along the weirs, to spawn and die a few making it to Spring.
My heart fell though rice paper as I lay re-reading your letter by the light of a harvest moon.
Euryhaline salmon are running in the arrow of West Virginia, the church of Philadelphia to seven outer candles of fire.
I know we will keep our triangle of Egyptian marble, of porphyry
walk the beach of a city, black harps playing on eel grass and teal,
our twining spirits become one turning of light to light.
The salmon will die and return to roam an earthy rotunda, a temple
and we will rise gasping
======================== First published in Littoral Literary Journal Spring Equinox 2005 also: =============================
GreyHeron
Light granting air a flash, almond sail of a god on estuary water, a tune to catch a glimpse
I am astounded at the calm of the heron, still as ruffled statue grey at the water's edge, a divinity in our day.
He is more than he is with the light on him. Open, I take on bright air
salt in my every vein from the marshalling pan and sea-road of a god, rye parchment in the offing at the reed-sung beach.
=======================
Ceres Edge
Over plinth, a satellite ring, the poison cornucopia, past raw arable cement to a tilted cabin
seeing orange peel like a festering of juice in the summer heat,
no purple-plumed legion marching a mirage or a whiff of the sea, I walk to the salty rim of our too-dry wheat.
From drought, a stir, gust to flashes of rain moistening soil like tired biscuit. Saved
from fire, imminent corn in our torrential space.
====================== First published in Littoral Literary Journal Autumn Equinox 2005. Also accepted: ======================
WhiteCup
Time ever plotting an end to silence, flinging a light with vivid flames behind it, smoking dawn
has the gift of spume, rock wall, ripening flood and a dusk to open air breathing the silence
eating a ruined basilica, priest and evening wolves.
======================
EstuaryMouth
Battery, cable trailing to a tin hat. Car. Apple core, a plank.
Tankers, red wafer on the eastern horizon. Forts. gulls, cormorants.
River promenade mile on mile of sky, raw sheer skies like wind.
======================== Editor: the poet Mervyn Lynford. Littoral was based in Southend- on-Sea. The Arts Council refused to fund the Literary Journal. His funds exhausted, my last two texts herewith could not be published
