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encyclopaedic

INNER MARSH FARM HIDE, BURTON MERE WETLANDS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read515 views

We have made the longish walk from the car park

on the decking through the marsh marigolds.

Before us is a teeming shallow lagoon.

Beyond are mixed woods, pastoral farmland

and a white house on the ridge of what was

the coast of the estuary before

the river silted and the marsh grew.

Behind the hide is a railway embankment –

the thrum of the odd diesel from Neston

to Wrexham and back baffled by the noise

of the cacophonous colony

of black headed gulls nesting on a islet.

Unaided we spotted those – and a shelduck

with its fancy red stripe and two shovellers

with their iridescent heads but are helped

with avocet, black tailed godwits and ruff.

 

We are the OCD species. Each member

of this ‘parlement of foules’ has at least

two names and a full biography

in many languages. How self-absorbed

they are! A solitary, silent coot

seems oblivious of the flock of gulls.

 

Here are serious folk with serious gear –

some of it camouflaged – who speak in subdued

encyclopaedic tones: strangers, kindly

in this companionable wooden hut –

which is a testament to human

vision, diligence and engineering –

unafraid to talk to strangers in this

always now fearful, riven land with its

taxonomies of hate.

 

 

 

CASTLE PLAYGROUND, BEAUMARIS

I think of those we love the most, recall

their playing here four decades apart –

as she and I sit at a picnic table

to finish her ice cream then rehearse

our vaudeville act. ‘I say, I say, I say,’

she declares, with barely a lisp or

hesitation, ‘my dog has no nose!’

‘Your dog has no nose! How does he smell?’ I ask.

‘Terrible!’ she says, and runs to the swings.

 

She can swing herself now, pushing against

the air, holding the chains just as she should –

as her mother did – beneath this unfinished

curtain wall built from local grit stone.

Determined to be free, she must go ever

higher – because we will catch her or because

the future seems always distant and safe.

 

I stand behind her – ready to push or catch –

and see the embracing, soothing horizon

of abiding mountains and perpetual sea.

This little one, as yet focussed on each

intensive, encyclopaedic moment,

sees only her splendid new trainers, feels

only the pendulum of blood in her veins.

‘Stop now,’ she calls and, once free, runs across

the putting green to the bouncy castle.