2 responses to “ON LITTLE EYE”

1. 

   Clive Watkins

   July 1, 2021

   I 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)

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2. 

   Pat Rogerson

   August 27, 2021

   Did 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!

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