LANDSCAPES WITH FIGURES
Just beyond the redundant sandstone seawall
a stonechat flies from reed to reed – golden now
for autumn – singing its brief notes with each flight.
In hidden lagoons among the reed beds
are thousands of migrants, pink-footed geese –
with their incessant, metallic chattering –
wintering from Greenland and from Iceland.
***
Swaddled we bask on a secluded bench
facing the westering sun, which glints
on the river’s one navigable channel
mercurial on the opposite bank.
Even in clear weather the far coast
is too distant to be detailed. Today’s
light haze obfuscates its hilly fields
and three small towns – except for a sixties
high-rise of slum-clearance social housing
that looms, eyeless, like a far off grave marker.
***
Out of some profound lake filled from mountain moors
an ice age made, the river rushes white,
over scattered glacial debris,
through a long, deep limestone vale, flows
past oak woods and stands of willows, edges
pastureland and industrial estates to shape
this vast estuarial landscape – that today
is gold and quicksilver.
