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Anglesey

SOUTH STACK, HOLYHEAD ISLAND

By David SelzerFebruary 21, 20191 Comment1 min read1.8K views

Beside the first angle in the zigzag steps

that descend steeply to the lighthouse –

where I have stopped to rest lungs and knees

and vow again this will be the last –

unique to this place on our planet

a fleawort is growing, its flowerheads

like miniature sun flowers. A red beaked chough

calls from the heathland above – pyrrhocorax,

pyrrhocorax. I can see Ireland from here –

the hills and mountains south of Dublin –

over an indigo sea whose waves

are barely ripples. Before taxonomies,

before words is wonder.

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By David Selzer

REGATTA, MENAI STRAITS

By David SelzerFebruary 21, 20190 Comments1 min read1.5K views

On the coast road across the straits the blue flash

of an ambulance appears, then disappears

behind a stand of trees and a barn.

The mainland late morning is so pellucid

one might almost count the dry stones in the walls

that mark the fields, climb past the sparse woods

and delineate the cropped moorlands

from the mountain tops. A cannon thud

starts the regatta of red sailed dinghies.

They scud and tack on the silvery straits,

their spinnakers burgeoning vainly.

The cannon thuds. Sails are furled and stowed.

The ebbing tide exposes wide sandbanks.

Swift clouds are covering the mountain peaks

and the woods are darkening, the road empty.

The brief day is over.

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By David Selzer

ACROSS THE WATERS

By David SelzerOctober 21, 20160 Comments1 min read1.4K views

Walking – toward the town – down Henlys Lane,

its low, lichen covered dry stone walls

adorned with bird’s-foot trefoil, its borders

with cow parsley and, where run-off

gathers from Baron’s Hill, red campion,

we note ahead, amongst the cattle,

the usual, large flock of herring gulls,

facing south in the low-lying marshy field.

All as we have come to know and like.

But, today, we hear an explosion – loud

enough but too workaday to be thunder.

We stop and look beyond the library,

the castle and the Straits to search the mauve

galleries of Bethesda’s slate quarries.

Nothing disturbs the distant, hazy stillness.

Later, on the way to the car, we pass

the unfinished Plantagenet castle

the final subjection of the Welsh made

redundant and hear a second blasting

from across the waters – and I know

how favoured our generation was removed

from wars, and how, like flowers, tenuous,

robust, our path to the future or the past.

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By David Selzer

SAPPHIRE

By David SelzerAugust 24, 20113 Comments1 min read1.8K views

We came here first maybe fifty years ago –

Porth Trecastell aka Cable Bay

(on Ynys Môn aka Anglesey) –

a small Iron Age hill fort on one headland,

a Neolithic grave on the other,

and a telephone cable to Ireland

in between. This bank holiday the bay

is busy – paddlers, bathers, canoeists.

In the gated burial chamber –

Barclodiad y Gawres, which translates,

‘the full apron of the giantess’ –

its prehistoric graffiti secured

against vandals, a pair of swallows

has nested. We can hear the nestlings.

Seeing us, the parents, beaks replete

with insects, perch on the outer gate,

waiting patiently for the lubberly,

flightless giants – one with a movable eye

that shafts like lightning – to depart.

When we do, they fly past, a steel-blue flash,

an iridescence, into the dark tomb.

From the dolmen’s entrance, on the horizon

is Holyhead Mountain. If the earth were flat,

we could see to Ireland – where the weathers

and the myths are made. In sunlight as sharp as

wings, the sea is so many shades of blue:

cerulean, aquamarine, cobalt,

amethyst, turquoise – and sapphire,

a token of all our married years.

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By David Selzer