Among wintry reeds not far from the horizon –

where mountain rain water and ocean brine,

the Dee and the Irish Sea, become one –

is a large, white, upturned hull, storm-wrecked

from its moorings in Connah’s Quay, perhaps,

certainly abandoned for twelve month and more,

too costly, maybe, to salvage. Such

a motley of flotsam: rusting buoys;

splintered pieces of superstructure;

frayed strands of nautical rope scattered

like serpents through the wetlands’ runnels;

decomposing in the teeming marshland

this sunny, January afternoon.

The light has gone in the west over the hills.

The chattering in the hidden lagoons

among marshland reeds has almost ceased.

Returning from the stubble fields inland

thousands and thousands of pink-footed geese,

collegiate in flight, were black and calling

against the westering sun. Now – migrants,

wintering from the Arctic islands: Iceland,

Greenland, Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard –

they are roosting in silent communes.