I am planning on writing a series of blogs about various books but in the meantime I thought I'd post this as I'm quite pleased with it.
Simon Armitage said that as a poet he looks for patterns and synchronicity. I think I had that in somewhere in mind when the idea for this bubbled up to the surface when I was in Cornwall over Christmas. At least it gave me something to think about as I walked by the sea in the hail!
Simon Armitage said that as a poet he looks for patterns and synchronicity. I think I had that in somewhere in mind when the idea for this bubbled up to the surface when I was in Cornwall over Christmas. At least it gave me something to think about as I walked by the sea in the hail!
St Michaels Mount
A mile or more of Mounts Bay and the billowing wind
leave only a rain carved shadow in the mist.
I can’t see where the water meets the cliff
or the crag stiffens into wall.
Just grey on grey on grey.
But I can picture that sea-glistened causeway,
leading to that midnight island,
where we were the only people in the world.
It was as if the deeps had parted for us
and the path ahead was moonlight clear.
Now the years have piled up in front of me
like so many emptied glasses at a pub table.
The memories finger-smudged
and the paths we might have taken
are long since lost to the incoming tide.
The insistent hail at my back drives me along the promenade.
Storm hood tugged low to a letter box view of the world
hunch shouldered and fists stuffed into pockets.
The wind’s grip a tender doorman
escorting me firmly onwards.
David Millington
26th January 2012
Nottingham
