POETRY

POETRY

A TOUCH OF SPRING

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read308 views

Driving down Boathouse Lane, Parkgate, at the bend

is the first view of the estuary.

This unseasonal February day, lit

with a spring-like sunshine, the vast reed beds

are golden filled with silver pools and lagoons

high tides have made. On the Welsh shore the narrow,

sea-going channel is pallid – above

Halkyn Mountain is a gentle lilac,

as are the Clwydians beyond, and east

Peckforton and Beeston on the Cheshire Plain.

 

Outside the town the RSPB car park,

on the site of the old sea-water baths,

is overwhelmed with birders – their serious

gear and sharp elbows – here to film or photo

feathered raptors devour water voles

fleeing the rising waters shoreward.

 

Later, putting out the bins in the mild dusk,

all the gardens of our neighbourhood

are filled with the singing of blackbirds.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE COOTS’ NEST

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read286 views

The coots have built their nest among lily pads

on the park’s ornamental pond: too far out

for foxes, too high for water rats;

an aquatic castle keep of twigs,

subtle and elegant engineering.

 

Next time we pass a tiny beak is cracking

the latte-coloured carapace from within.

Instinctively the chick emerges,

shakes itself, teeters down to the water,

swims, returns, squeaking for food, both parents

immediately attendant – with their dark

plumage, the knightly blaze on the long,

horny shield of their beaks, their ancient

English name, named for their call, ‘Cut…cut’.

 

In summer the nest will have become flotsam,

the chick will have matured, the lilies flowered:

as sure as logic, as fugitive as blooms.

 

 

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POETRY

ABSENCES

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read300 views

Yesterday, while I was reading in the shade,

a dragonfly came from nowhere, landing on the lawn

in the sun near my chair. Light coruscated

on the extraordinary gossamer

of its wings, the polished bronze of its body.

A sudden breeze stirred the pages of my book.

The dragonfly rose skyward soundlessly.

 

At opposite corners of our roof, starlings,

for a quarter century and more,

made their nests in gaps in the soffits.

We knew their curious whistles, the scrabbling

beneath the eaves, the soft chirruping.

 

This May wild bees nested in one of the gaps.

Dark prancers, they have filled a patch of sky

with a low humming, a murmuration

of glades, of groves.

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

SAND BUILDERS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read296 views

The road makers built a culvert so the stream

might still flow beside the ice cream kiosk

onto the beach and disappear in the sands,

as it did from before the mammoths left.

The brief delta that it forms attracts

engineers of all genders and all ages.

Some are equipped with long-handled spades,

and with robust buckets, while some make-do.

There are ten builders, navigators –

mostly strangers working in quiet harmony –

making dams, and moats for crenellated keeps.

Later, when everyone has gone and the tide

is lapping against the highest ramparts,

and washing away the sturdiest of levees,

a little egret lands at the water’s edge

for crabs and razor clams.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE FIELD

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read279 views

In a pond at the furthest edge of the field,

fallow this year and last and before that,

are bulrushes still wintry coloured.

 

Who owns this field now and why it is unused

so much I do not know. I remember

travellers’ shaggy piebalds wintering here.

And, long before soya or maize, a cash crop

of broad beans, and a fox hiding in it

from the hunt – the baying hounds leashed;

the master in his red coat riding the field’s

boundaries; his black-coated colleagues

dismounted in the lane. Rain fell, softly,

pattering on the leaves. The master, alone,

on foot, continued patrolling – his coat

losing its colour in the damp dusk.

Next day, though the crop was immature,

he ordered a ‘harvest’. There was no sign

of the fox, not even its droppings.

 

The bulrushes, ready to seed, are still upright;

seem, at this distance, forlorn like white,

unlit candles at some lost garden party,

some neglected fête.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

TRAVELLERS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read296 views

As we walk beside the wide estuary

we follow a wheatear as it waits for us

on the embankment of the rough causeway

then bobs and flits from stone to stone as we near,

enticing us, flashing its white rump,

which is pure white like an egret’s feathers.

 

We watch the tide beneath the low viaducts

begin to rise. On tracks Stephenson built

the London-Holyhead train crosses,

passes close to Edward’s grey castle walls.

Waders are gathering on the mudflats –

curlews, red shanks, egrets – denizens,

immigrants. This bird, which led us from its nest

among the embankment’s crevices, will

winter in Africa.

 

 

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