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.
Harvey Lillywhite
October 31, 2025OK, last comment.
A kind of seamless fusion of natural observation, human presence, and geological time, right?
The poem’s precision – ‘a stonechat flies from reed to reed’, ‘pink-footed geese… chattering’ —
recalls the patient eye of a painter.
The middle section’s ‘swaddled’ figures basking in the sun introduce a gentle intimacy that contrasts with the vast, impersonal landscape.
The final stanza deepens the poem’s scope, tracing the river from Ice Age origins to modern industry, uniting deep time with fleeting perception.
Its language- ‘gold and quicksilver’ — shimmers with realism and quiet transcendence; the ordinary scene feels mythic and enduring.
Ha…I knew my major in English lit would serve me well someday.
Thanks for this poem!
John HUDDART
November 5, 2025All one poem – 360 degrees of observation, 4 dimensions of thought. Transcends the ordinary. And Harvey at his best too!
David Press
November 10, 2025So much to love in this!
I agree with John Huddart’s comment, but as well as 360 degrees observation you use a zoom lens from close up to satellite image, which makes it vast. Then you place the swaddled figures! You can’t avoid thinking of swaddled babies, yet these figures are probably old. As Harvey says, an intimate image. Soaking up the sun as autumn progresses.
A beautiful evocation of the passage of time put alongside the redundant stone wall, grave marker block of flats, and ice age formed lake and river.
Thank you for a lovely poem.