POETRY

POETRY

LANDSCAPES WITH FIGURES

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read957 views

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

AUGUST MOONSCAPE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read632 views

A sturgeon moon is rising through wispy cloud,

making the waters of the bay a rippling,

molten orange. Out of sight, above the cliffs,

on pastureland bordered by oakwoods, a pair

of tawny owls is hunting amongst

the sleeping sheep, the owls’ long calls

trilling through the dark. A heron, with its

harsh cry, is crossing the moon’s fervid wake.

 

A small boat chugs into the bay, the searchlight

at its bow scoping the jutting rocks

the spring tide is covering. There is a sudden,

mechanical splutter, a muffled oath,

silence, the waves’ soft fall – then the tinkering

of metal. Meanwhile, the moon and the earth

have turned. Somewhere, like silvery submarines,

atlantic sturgeon lurk. On the far headland

is the white tower of a ruined windmill.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

MUCH THAT HAPPENS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read620 views

Much that happens everywhere leaves no record:

the crayfish in the shallows beneath the bridge

briefly in July; the sudden gust of wind that shakes

the ancient palm beside the tennis courts;

the fresh paw print drying on the fence panel

where a fox had clambered up at dawn;

in the rough lane of earth and flints, the litter

of sweet chestnuts from the overhanging trees,

and violets flowering on the banks;

the horses uneasy in the stable

as September lightning fills the valley;

the narrow river rumbling with rain;

on the patio’s wrought-iron table

an empty glass trembling.

 

 

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POETRY

THE HEADLAND

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read575 views

Beside the steep, rough pathway to the headland

blackberries are purpling. As we pass,

stone chats – with their melodiously

metallic call – rise from feasting on the fruits.

Once through the kissing-gate at the top

we are on the smooth turf shorn by walkers,

sheep and winds. At sea level the bay

seemed crystalline, jade. Up here the sea

is a lexicon of blues. The horizon –

empty of shipping and coasts – is a curve

of geometric perfection. The weather

is still, but the waters shift, ripple, swell.

There is a pre-human silence here – the airs,

the tides lapping at the cavernous cliffs

below. A pod of dolphins breaks the surface.

A pair of gannets dives into a darker shade

of water that may be a shoal of fish.

Later, we will pick some blackberries

as we descend the path, scattering

the clamorous stone chats.

 

 

 

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POETRY

CONSIDER THE LITTLE EGRET

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read859 views

A little egret – elegant, self-absorbed

in its white solitude, its pale yellow beak

poised – is stalking crustaceans along

the low water margins of these mundane straits,

with their pleasure cruises and mussel dredging.

It is a native now not a renegade

from the storied Nile, the intemperate south.

 

Beyond the waters, high mountain ranges

fill the horizon. Two valleys split them –

one wooded, with a waterfall, wild ponies;

the other hanging, deep, steep sided.

In the foothills are sheep runs and stone walls –

above, an ancient caldera, and peaks

we cannot see from here. These featureless

hectares of wilderness – lavender, lilac,

mauve, as the light changes – somebody owns.

 

Nobody owns the little egret.

Here it has no natural predators –

no lurking crocodiles or aggressive

hippopotami – only perhaps

the polluted tides, the dieseled waves

it carefully navigates. We go

where we can go. We are what we are.

How free a spirit the little egret seems –

from guilt and hope and love!

 

 

 

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POETRY

PROSPECTS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.4K views

A house and high-walled garden occupy

nearly all of the old Lifeboat Station’s yard.

All that remains of its shed and the ramp

down into the inlet are the stumps

of the wooden supports set in concrete blocks –

both wood and concrete are ragged, wrecked, sea-worn.

 

On what litte remains of the yard

are two benches in recycled plastic

with small, faux-brass plaques – practical

and altruistic memento mori.

Behind them is the garden wall, hidden now

completely by a dense bank of hebe,

that has grown from the garden over the wall.

 

In decline as farmland is subdued,

there is a small flock of starlings in the hebe,

grazing on the insects the plant attracts.

I remember the swirling clouds of

constellations across fields and hedgerows,

and in the natureless centres of cities.

The congregation in the hebe, which has

been chattering with exultation,

goes quiet for no apparent reason,

and then suddenly begins again –

like a multitude of whisperings.

 

Like all prospects the view from here is

ambivalent: gone, like the lifeboats,

are sea baths, hotel, fishing village –

somewhere once worthy of sepia postcards –

replaced by converted cottages,

and new build all the way to the coastal road

and above along the low line of hills –

ex-pats and holiday lets. In the inlet

below, a boy on a paddle board signals

to imagined comrades. Eastwards is the sea,

today merely murmuring, violet where clouds pass –

in the depths porpoise and dolphin dive.

 

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