Welcome to David Selzer
David Selzer is a writer of poetry, prose fiction, screenplays and stage plays. He embraces digital platforms to share his work of more than fifty years… READ MORE
Latest Post / Update
-
SEASCAPE
Once we have climbed the steep track to the cliff top
and seen that the coastal path is narrow
and edgy along the range of jagged cliffs
that stretch and turn for miles, we decide
discretion is the better part of aging
and sit on a new bench provided by
the kindly dead. We can hear the wind
in the gorse, sheep cropping the tussocky grass
at the very edge, and the waves out of sight
on the rocks below swell and fall, swell and fall…
There is a container ship turning slowly
on the horizon; nearer, the white sails
of a dinghy, the shimmering shadows
of a shoal of fish; and, bobbing closer still,
half a dozen lobster pot marker buoys.
Two seal heads appear briefly above the waves.
Suddenly a solitary dolphin
breaks the surface a hundred yards away.
We hear it exhale – its head, fin, back
glistening as it dives… And then a stillness…
almost a holding of breath…
3 responses to “SEASCAPE”
-
Discretion has its rewards. What a great bench to rest on. I’m sure the dolphin felt your presence, your being there and taking in the beauty of this coastline, its habitat.
-
I like this, David. There are some excellent turns here. For example, “edgy” is what I would be if I were walking that “narrow” path along such “jagged cliffs (more edges); and certainly, “discretion is the better part of aging”. I like the ironic conjunction between the new bench and its kindly donors, the dead. I like the sweep of the poem out from the bench deep into the view and then back again. The “shimmering shadows” of the fish is a good observation, and pleasingly paradoxical. At the end it seems that the dolphin may not be the only creature holding its breath.
-
That dolphin had spied a fish supper!
-
Search by Tag
9/11 A.E. Housman America Anglesey anti-semitism Atlantic Atlantic Slave Trade Auschwitz Beaumaris British Cape Town cathedral Celts charity Cheshire Chester childhood Churchill Civil War comrades cormorant death Dee dee estuary Dublin England English Europe Ezra Pound Fossils fox French Gaza gazebo gibbet God Great War Greenland gulls heart Hegel Hitler Iraq Ireland Irish sea irony. Israel Jerusalem Jews landscape Liverpool Liverpool Bay Llandudno London love Manhattan May Menai Straits Mersey miracle Missouri Moscow Napoleon North Wales Ovid paradise Paris Parkgate Plato pre-pubescent Putin racist river river Dee robin roma Romans Rome Russia skull South Africa Soweto Stalin swifts T.S. Eliot teacher Telford travellers Trump USA Venice Victorian Vienna W.B. Yeats Wales Wellington Welsh winter Wirral Ynys Mon
Leave a Reply