ON LITTLE EYE
Only the highest tides reach this small island’s
sandstone rocks. A collar of flaxen sand
surrounds it. A quarter of a mile north
is Middle Eye. A hundred yards further
is Hilbre, habitation of hermits,
custom’s officers, weather stations.
These three are rugged, stony outcrops
in the mouth of the estuary.
Leaving West Kirby’s suburban promenade,
we had walked, at low water, to Little Eye
across the Dee’s hard, striated sands.
Westward is Wales, and the redundant lighthouse
at Point of Ayr, and, beyond and looming,
Llandudno’s Great Orme like the dragon’s head
the Norsemen named it for. Here is the earth’s
sweep, our planet’s generous curve and grasp.
Nearer, on West Hoyle Bank, a colony
of maybe thirty, forty grey seals
has hauled out, dark shapes only at this distance –
their calls plaintive as gulls’, chesty, guttural.
In the channel between – filling with tide –
two kite surfers skim noisily into sight.
The giant sails swell, billow, with chancy air.
The seals begin to stir. We are tiny
on the arc of the world.
Clive Watkins
July 1, 2021I liked this, David. The ending is particularly effective—the seals, heavy on land (‘hauled out’), the channel filling with the tide, dragged by gravity round the globe, the ‘chancy air’ that swells the ‘giant sails’ and indicates the vulnerability of the kite surfers should the wind change. It revives my own memories of this area and its wide views, in my case from the 1970s when we lived at Gayton, on the Dee side of the Wirral. The beach at Caldy was the site of one our regular walks. As you write, the Dee sands can indeed be hard and striated. In places they can also be treacherous to the unwary—such as our eldest, then an excited seven-year-old boy, when, one early January day in 1979, he ran ahead of his mother towards the water and found himself suddenly sinking to the waist. Fortunately, Irene, with much effort and at some risk to herself—she was three months pregnant at the time—managed to extricate him. (Where was I? At work of course.) The event is marked in a poem in JIGSAW (https://waywiser-press.com/product/jigsaw/).
Inscriptions
for Noel
1. Caldy Shore
What dazzles and blinds is not the sun alone,
but light coming from afar to flash
off scalloped mud, off ruched water,
the rush of the returning tide:
illegible splendour,
dark inwardnesses that cannot bear
even the frail weight of the human.
2. Meal Hill
It is the great heat-engine of the atmosphere drives this wind
that, flooding across Wessenden and Cartworth Moor,
at Meal Hill’s abrupt front
lifts up these home-made wings of paper and wood.
Rooted, he steers
with the delicate motion of his thumbs
the plane’s swerve and sidle,
as the air inscribes
on his soft ribs, on the hollow bones of his cheek,
its icy distances.
3. Bowfell
At such a height,
the earth beneath their feet contracts
to this pyramid of tilted slabs,
these grey beds of unremembering rock.
Below them, a cloud of light conceals
the valley’s glacial scoop, beck, intake, the last trees.
The air grows thinner.
Far off, the sea unfolds its glittering music.
Effort and love have brought them to this place,
will take them down again,
walking home at evening
through sheep-pastures,
between stone walls,
the cry of young lambs brimming the cool air.
(courtesy of the Waywiser Press: https://waywiser-press.com)
Pat Rogerson
August 27, 2021Did this walk whilst staying in the caravan at Wirral Country Park. Following those ahead of us we struggled across the slippery rocks of Middle Eye – a challenge for a poorly knee but we made it. The Oyster Catchers gathered at the water’s edge in their dozens. We spent a good while gathering sea glass to be turned into jewellery. A lovely walk, and your poem has brought back memories of the walk. We sensibly avoided the rocks on our return by walking in the tracks of a 4×4!