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Atlantic

POETRY

MAM CYMRU

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read381 views

The purple, jagged rocks on the island’s shore

were molten lava from volcanoes –

mere craters for aeons now – across the straits,

and limestone boulders in the hinterland

the slow detritus of the last ice age.

 

RAF Typhoons have flown from their air base,

ten miles or so from here, every day,

leaving the island with their stormy thunder,

over the mountainous Llyn Peninsula

out into the north east Atlantic,

as if it were quite another sea.

 

This island was Mam Cymru, the granary

of Wales. Its ubiquitous, redundant mills

are unmarked monuments to a past

bountiful, precarious, and brutal.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

DRIVING INTO THE DARK

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read594 views

For Annabel Honor-Lissi

 

In those stark dreams when sleep shades into waking,

dreams that haunt the light like a taste in the mouth,

or a name half-remembered, half-forgotten,

I am always travelling – this dawn

along the black tops and the turnpikes,

from the Texas Panhandle north east

to Casco Bay, Maine. Ahead is the thought

of moments, or a non-stop two day drive:

from the sun-belt’s stubborn, garish pandemic;

via the fame of Dallas, the sentient

battlefields of the civil war, the rusting

foundries of the east, to stand on the bay’s

windy shore; and contemplate an island,

where black and white war refugees lived

as one – until the prospect of profit

evicted them, and dug up their graves.

The New Meadows River and the Atlantic

swirl round the verdant ruin of Malaga.

Are lost chances ever redeemable?

But no dreams end where they should. The sun

is already setting as I cross

the Red River into Arkansas.

A storm is coming westwards from the Great Plains.

The darkness I am driving into gleams

with centuries of rain.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

‘ANOTHER PLACE’ REVISITED AT LOW WATER

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read517 views

‘It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body

of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe.’ Anthony Gormley

 

They are still standing and their slow carapace

of barnacles breathes. Small pools of eaten

razor clams and star fish lie at their feet – fry

dart amongst seaweed fronds and the dead.

An off shore breeze brings the calls of distant

sea birds close. The RNLI flag stiffens

and plastic kites, on the slight headland, swoop –

but the cumulus clouds and the con trails,

across the Atlantic, are almost still.

Wind turbines proliferate on Burbo Bank

and, beyond, along the North Wales coast.

Over the horizon, the world awaits

high tide. Meanwhile, on tricky sands, we move

with care among these icons of cast-iron

steadfastness and promise.

 

 

Note: The poem was first published on the site in July 2017.

 

 

 

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POETRY

A DAY OUT

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read568 views

From one of the high rise budget hotels

in Portimao we picked up a group

of six challenged men and their two minders.

(Portugal, our tour guide told us later,

was enabling those – institutionalised

since childhood for learning difficulties –

to take vacations, with supervision,

from the drab, echoing, noisome halls).

Two were remarkable: a gaunt fellow

bent permanently double, always moving,

keeping close to the other, a joker

with moustached Arabic looks and frightened eyes.

 

We crossed the Arade – more reed bed now

than river – and entered ancient Silves;

visited the cathedral – an erstwhile mosque –

and the Moorish castle. The jester

talked almost without breathing, the bent chap

by his side. We drove through regimented

plantations of pine, acacia,

eucalyptus, climbing towards the spa town

of Caldas de Monchique – cool beneath its oaks

and umbrella pines. The stooped lad

ran quickly from shade to shade. His mate

spoke rapidly to the halcyon air.

 

We ascended Mount Foia – with its shop,

café, and air force radar station.

Westwards we could see Cape St Vincent,

the Atlantic – south imagine Morocco.

The two young men were sitting on a step,

out of the wind, smoking roll ups, watching

a family – mum and dad, two boys –

flying a crimson kite.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

ANOTHER PLACE REVISITED AT LOW WATER

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read459 views


‘It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe.’ Anthony Gormley

 

They are still standing and their slow carapace

of barnacles breathes. Small pools of eaten

razor clams and star fish lie at their feet – fry

dart amongst seaweed fronds and the dead.

An off shore breeze brings the calls of distant

sea birds close. The RNLI flag stiffens

and plastic kites, on the slight headland, swoop –

but the cumulus clouds and the con trails,

across the Atlantic, are almost still.

Wind turbines proliferate on Burbo Bank

and, beyond, along the North Wales coast.

Over the horizon, the world awaits

high tide. Meanwhile, on tricky sands, we move

with care among these icons of cast-iron

steadfastness and promise.

 

 

 

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POETRY

MADELEINE MOMENTS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read463 views

‘And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine…’

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST, Marcel Proust

 

The day the season’s second Atlantic storm

was due there was I – after a sausage

and bacon bap with brown sauce and an Earl Grey

in the heritage station’s draughty café –

celebrating my 74th birthday

with my small family in a British Rail

standard compartment on the Santa Special.

 

We journeyed from Llangollen to Lapland

(aka Carrog) with mince pies, miniature Baileys

for the adults and juice for our granddaughter,

who gave me a cartoon sestych entitled

‘My Grandpa is amazing – he does…’.

She appeared with me in each frame as I

talked, shopped, word processed, cooked, travelled and read.

We passed pastel shaded December fields,

empty copses filled with russet leaves,

and bleak hawthorn hedge rows festooned with a wild

clematis – Travellers’ Joy or Old Man’s Beard.

 

Someone, despite the notices, had left

a window open in the corridor,

so, as we went through the long Berwyn Tunnel,

it yellowed with billowing sooty smoke

that seeped under the compartment’s door.

It was a madeleine moment: crossing

sulphurous bridges, waiting on ill-lit

platforms amongst gouts of steam and fog,

shuddering reflections in carriage windows.

 

As we climbed, we left the river – by turns

meandering through meadows then white water –

to still slowly gouge the valley bed,

and we had a visit from Santa himself,

with Elves, bearing gifts. Our granddaughter

was appropriately shy and polite

though she is calculatedly and/or

patronisingly agnostic about

F.C. – and reasonably sure God is

imaginary and certain there is

no such thing anywhere in the universe

as zero gravity. I am certain

I still believed when I was nearly 7.

The world seemed an obscurantist place.

 

At Lapland, we queued to pose with Santa

et al for a photo op on a sledge.

It began to drizzle. In the waiting room

a coal fire was burning in the grate.

My grand daughter hugged me. I felt gravely

light of heart and head, warmly welcome

in the universe – and thought suddenly

of a world garlanded with Old Man’s Beard.

 

 

 

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