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egrets

POETRY

GRAND DESIGNS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read391 views

Herons and egrets rise from the same shared ground –

a silted tidal estuary – rise

among expanses of marshland grasses,

vivid as shamrock, darker than samphire;

fly north on measured wing beats towards the sea,

to fish where the tide is slowly ebbing.

 

Beside the dirt path in the wild border

are campion, vetch, and bird’s foot trefoil –

scatterings of gold and purple and pink

and ancient names among the stinging nettles,

those tale-tellers of broken habitations.

 

Each sandstone block of the now redundant

two mile long sea wall was planned, ordered, paid for,

quarried, cut, carted, meticulously laid.

Now, in its foundations, scurvy grass grows.

 

 

 

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POETRY

ACROSS THE ESTUARY

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.5K views

The beds of varicoloured reeds, fields almost,

stretch north and south along this bank for miles,

and westwards, nearly to Wales, across the wide,

silted river. Unseen marsh creatures scarcely

disturb the grasses. Egrets and herons

fly in and out of hidden lagoons.

Before silt, from here, the Dublin packet sailed –

with G.F. Handel and Jonathan Swift.

On the opposite shore are the ruins

of Flint Castle where Richard was dethroned –

‘…night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.’

Sun catches a window on Halkyn Mountain.

 

This year marks the first centenary

of the Amritsar massacre, the second

of Peterloo – but even now there are

doubters, equivocators, who minimise

the carnage, exculpate the perpetrators.

 

In the small car park behind us a car door

opens briefly – the radio announces,

in a public school accent, that there will be

never ending dystopia ‘until’

and ‘unless’. Today is the first of summer,

hot, windless, with dragonflies and bees

abounding. This remorseless marshland is

unequivocal – earth and vegetation

are ruthless, immaculate remembrancers.

 

 

 

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POETRY

LA PERRUCHE ET LA SIRÈNE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.3K views

‘Even if I could have done when I was young what I’m doing now –
and it is what I dreamed of then – I wouldn’t have dared.’  Henri Matisse

 

In his early eighties – a magician
in colours with his (genuinely)
lovely assistant, Lydia – Matisse
creates a canvas, twenty five foot
by eleven, of pinned-on then glued-on
painted paper cut-outs of fronds and fruits,
in many colours, and a profound blue
parakeet and a profound blue mermaid –
seductive, tropical and teeming…
his Oceania revisited,
his northener’s revelation of the south.

There are parakeets – befittingly green –
in the Surrey Hills and mermaids rumoured,
hair flowing fast, far upstream in the Wey.
There are, for certain, by Afon Conwy
sea lavender, thrift and birds foot trefoil
and, in the channels the low tide forms,
curlews and egrets wading and the sea-racked,
black struts of wrecks. Beyond are the purple, mauve,
lilac mountains…my epiphany, my south.

I cut and paste at will and muse with my
‘assistant’ of so many years – lovely,
genuine – on art, youth and aspiration.
Had I known when I became a poet
half a century ago that I could write
this then would I have dared?

 

 

 

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