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cormorant

POETRY

CORMORANTS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read309 views

In the driest months when the tidal river

is low and the current almost lethargic,

when the waters flow gently over the weir

the Normans built to create a fish pool,

you can see the cut sandstone blocks from which

the sloping dam was made. Near the southern bank

salmon steps were constructed, and a mill-race –

where this winter’s spate has jammed a fallen tree.

On the groyne between the steps and the race

eleven cormorants stand, spreading their wings,

facing down stream. The river hurtles past,

as if the ice caps had begun melting.


The highest tides expunge the weir entirely,

leaving, momentarily, a gleaming,

shifting, swollen calm. One of the cormorants

dives, then another, until they are all

submerged in muffled memories of the sea.

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POETRY

SALMON LEAP

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read315 views

An aged busker in a stetson sets up

on the river embankment near the café.

He talks at length about his life, then sings

Carole King’s ‘And it’s too late, baby now’.

The weary crowd applauds sporadically.

We walk towards the weir, where brown-tinted

helter-skelter roaring iridescent spume

catches the sunlight. We remember

when the salmon – from the North Atlantic

through the Irish Sea – leapt steps by the weir,

homing upstream in their birth river

to spawn. Industrial effluent released

continually has destroyed that.


A cormorant – one of a gulp that clusters

near the weir – dives, leaving only bubbles,

and emerges, an endangered eel

writhing in its beak.

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POETRY

THE STORM

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read580 views

In the old stone house above the harbour,

however well sealed the windows are

against the rain and the wind, squalls invade

the chimneys and blow in the empty hearths.

The lamp at the end of the quay still shines

despite the waves spilling over the wall

and agitating the tethered lobster creels.

 

A surge douses the light – but wild clouds part

and a full moon shines on a sea running high.

Abruptly the turbulent clouds close –

and there is only a low roar, an

erratic buffeting of wind and rain,

and the wailing in the dark hearths. Absence

echoes in the blackness of each bare room.

 

In the pallid dawn there is no one now

to see the tumbled creels on the quay,

the lamp’s broken glass, the empty harbour,

the cormorants and the kittiwakes

flying out across a cloud grey sea –

or to conjure songs about the weathers made

beyond the horizon.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

A MATTER OF MATHEMATICS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read484 views

The garden is busy today. A robin

and a wren appear to be nesting.

The noisy blackbirds certainly are.

We are preparing for the partial eclipse

with the pinhole cameras we have made

from paper plates. In the event –

on the first day of spring – the sun is veiled,

as if by wisps of smoke, so we can glance

directly at the moon’s crossing, at this

dark geometry. There is excitement

in neighbouring gardens – and, over the road,

from the Pilates class at the Methodist’s.

 

*

 

Today we drive along the coast and see

the high tides yesterday’s configuration

partly caused – a spring tide in every sense;

water levels covering the stanchions

of a pier, lapping the top of a quay.

At the turn, the sea leaving the straits

hits the sea entering. A cormorant

twirls gracelessly in the rushing, tumbling race,

a dinghy with an outboard wallows,

the pilot bobbing like a marionette –

aware of the swift calculus of the waves.

 

*

 

How we gaggle like geese for, rightly,

a wonder or a marvel or a portent!

A feather falls. Intuitively,

we revere such elegant algebra.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE LEGACY OF THE CLERKS

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read603 views

The most senior staff had their offices
at one corner of the building, stacked
one above the other. From their desks,
through one of their three sets of long windows,
they could watch the tidal river’s ebb and flow
and the decline of the salmon. If they stood
at another they could see upstream
to the medieval sandstone bridge – the river
susurrating beneath its arches –
and, beyond, the meadows prone to flooding.

Like most county halls it was an empty
rectangle. Of those with their own offices –
our names and titles plated to the doors
and all, but the most senior, with only
one set of windows – location was all.
A view outwards – even if it were only
the canyon-like yard where the prison vans
debouched – indicated rank. On balance,
we did more good than harm. Things worked:
schools were opened and closed; bridges made safe;
fires attended; streets kept orderly.
We were an embankment to stem havoc.

Though the ubiquitous tea trolley wheeled
through the corridors of power promptly
at 11.00 and 3.00 was a leveller,
my office faced inwards to white tiled walls.
The room had a piece – the last extant, old hands
claimed – of the former Chief Clerk’s carpet:
yellow, sixties, a ‘contemporary’ design
with fussy circles and curlicues
perhaps belying, on the reverse,
the Free Mason’s chessboard. I never looked.

Through my window I could see the tent of sky
criss-crossed by skeins of gulls and flights of pigeons.
I would imagine the heaving waters
from the mountains curbed by the ancient weir
above the bridge – and, on a branch wrenched
in some forgotten storm and caught on the weir,
a cormorant waiting.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

JUBILEE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read631 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.

 

 

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