Tag Archives

Black Headed Gulls

POETRY

CROSSING THE COMPASS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read344 views

When I reach the half landing I will always

pause and at least glance through the long window

that frames garden, high wall, terraced roofs

and sky. I saw, one time, against roseate clouds

lit by the setting sun and billowing

in an easterly wind, dark like a line

of dancing letters, flock after flock

of black-headed gulls, crossing the compass

south east from the drowned meadows of the Dee

to the Mersey’s low tide mud flats north west.

 

For the last of the stragglers to pass,

it took long enough for a poem to catch,

for that slow, flickering, certain fire to take.

And I thought of caribou on the Tundra,

salmon in the Aleutians, swallows

over Timbuktu – and our loved ones,

their small migration north.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

MIRAGE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read319 views

On Little Eye, a family appears trapped
by the incoming tide – two adults,
a boy, a girl and a dog marooned
in some Enid Blyton adventure.
We anticipate an RNLI
Atlantic hoving to the rescue.
But they wait in the sun for the ebb,
the dog barking at black headed gulls.

By a sandstone outcrop are high, thick bushes
with vivid orange berries – ‘Poisonous!’
we hear our childhood’s guardians call.
But a woman is gathering them –
Sea-buckthorn berries – nutritional,
medicinal throughout Eurasia.

And I remember my first outing
after a heart attack – to the North Shore,
Llandudno – a picnic in a shelter
by the paddling pool and an October sun
making me thankful. ‘We had salami
sandwiches,’ I say. ‘As if!’ you respond.

Here, at sea level on West Kirby’s beach,
people, at the sea’s edge, seem to walk
in the waves, on the horizon itself.
From the top of the dunes, they become
cormorants drying their wings on the sand.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
0 Comments
POETRY

JUBILEE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read509 views

‘Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound…and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.’ Leviticus 25:9 & 25.10

 

Much of the chapters and footnotes of England’s,

though not Britain’s, history are scribed here

in stone and iron – Roman Walls, Norman weir,

marshalling yards – the rest is on paper,

of course, and from hearsay. It is said,

for example, for Victoria’s Jubilee,

in our street, lilac trees were planted.

Some have survived changes of taste or neglect.

 

This city, where I have lived most of my life

by chance then choosing, is shaped by the Dee,

that brought wine and the Black Death from Acquitaine,

powered the long defunct tobacco mills and still

draws occasional salmon from the oceans.

I imagine them waiting in the deep currents,

fattening on sand eels, squid, shrimp, herring,

and then the long, fasting haul from west

of Ireland, homing for their breeding grounds.

A cormorant perches on the salmon steps.

The last of the fishermen is long dead.

 

Like the calls and wings of Black-headed Gulls,

blown by April storms, the names and titles

of princes echo from the neutral sky

and sound through the deferential streets.

No doubt, there will be the splendid nonsense –

the cathedral’s ring of  bells will peel

and the Lord God Almighty will be urged

repeatedly to ‘save the Queen’. So,

let the ram’s horn blow like a trumpet

through Mammon’s and God’s obsequious temples –

and ‘…proclaim liberty throughout all the land…’

 

Almost which ever road you take westward,

in the distance, are the Welsh hills. The Legions

exiled the Celts from here – Saxons et al,

with legal threats and occasional killings,

kept them out except for trade and prayer

but forbade their songs. Now, waiting, we

are everywhere. Let the ram’s horn sound.

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
2 Comments
POETRY

WE PRISONERS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read647 views

A lark starting from the heather; a lamb

amazed by a heron; a hare gutted

at a turn in the road; the familiar path

obscured by fern, bramble, convolvulus:

the gallery in my head is open

all hours – by turns, thriving and derelict.

The sparrow in my chest, where my heart lay,

now flings itself at broken panes, now stills.

At the end of the pier, where steamships docked,

black-headed gulls and anglers watch and wait.

The steel-faced laughing man will read our stars.

Under the planking, the jelly fish glide.

My heart is a fist clenched in darkness,

a sea-anemone in coral waters.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
3 Comments

Recent Posts