Standing on the embankment that separates

the Marine Lake from the Dee Estuary

I can see the world’s curvature and compass:

east, over the lake, a hundred yards away,

is The Promenade; south – beyond the dinghies

moored midstream, their halyards tinkling

in the steady breeze – the white cooling towers

and the cable-stayed bridge at Connah’s Quay;

west, Flintshire’s industrial shore rising

steeply to become Halkyn Mountain,

where a fire has begun in the gorse

and the bracken on Holywell Common;

north west, Hilbre, island of erstwhile

pilgrimage then commerce; north – beneath

the horizon where ships wait for high tide

to cross the Liverpool Bar – West Kirby’s beach,

stretching into a mile of sand flats that ends

where the distant waves break ashen and silent.

Note: This is a revised version of the piece first published on the site in August 2013. I have taken in the last year or so – encouraged by Sylvia Selzer – to reading poems about places aloud in situ. Reading this one aloud on West Kirby prom made clear the original’s infelicities of syntax – and three factual errors.