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Lavan Sands

POETRY

OMENS

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.5K views

This October’s high water has almost reached

the top of the sea wall, its lapping

silenced by two oafish nabobs on jet skis –

iconoclasts shattering the seascape

of the Straits. Rain clouds along the mainland

are lifting, greyness lightening, slowly

becoming white – revealing early Autumn’s

gradual alchemy. Two porpoises

surface briefly out in the deepest channel,

swimming, in the remnants of the Gulf Stream,

from Cardigan Bay to Liverpool Bay.

 

As the tide drains northwards over Lavan Sands

from the unexpected south a cold breeze blows.

A great crested grebe – a freshwater bird

only on sea coasts in winter – is fishing

among the moored cruisers, their pennants

tremulous in the wind.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

A VIEW OF THE STRAITS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.4K views

The image has stayed with me since last summer

when we sat on the restaurant’s terrace

sipping Prosecco with our small family

to celebrate our first fifty years

of marriage: a view I had not seen before

of these straits I thought I knew so well

between Ynys Môn and Gwynedd’s coast,

a view – past Bangor Pier and Gallow’s Point,

over the Lavan Sands and Dutchman’s Bank

hidden beneath the high tide’s guileful waters –

to the rose horizon, and Liverpool Bay

out of sight with its wrecks and wind farms.

 

And I felt then – relaxed with the balm

of the sun, the wine, and those I am

lucky enough to love – and know now

with the wisdom of a year ever closer

to that untravelled bourn, how, irrespective

of the heart’s gazetteer, its topography,

all love comes unbidden like the elements.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

CHUTZPAH

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.9K views

A nor’ easterly blew – over Dutchman Bank –

on the front at Beaumaris, so we had

our chips, fish and mushy peas in the Vectra,

watching the ebb tide slowly, slowly expose

the furrowed gold of the Lavan Sands

and the cormorants and oyster catchers

skim the waves, when, suddenly, a herring gull,

that voracious omnivore, that frequenter

of rubbish tips and landfills – the colours

of its plumage pristine, as if painted –

landed on our bonnet and, not six feet

from a town council notice forbidding

the feeding of said beasts, watched us eat

each pea, chip, fish flake and morsel of batter –

meanwhile blocking the view – and then buggered off!

 

Note: this piece has been subsequently published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer.

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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