Tag Archives

Liverpool Bay

POETRY

SAND FLATS AT WEST KIRBY

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read269 views

At low water the sand flats stretch unbroken

down the Dee estuary’s English coast

to the reed beds of Parkgate and Burton Marsh;

stretch beyond the islands in the river’s mouth –

Hilbre, Middle Eye and Little Eye –

towards the wind turbines in Liverpool Bay;

then along the head of the Peninsula,

past Meols, Leasowe, Wallasey and New Brighton,

to join the mudflats of the Mersey.

 

At low water the sand flats are safe to cross

to the islands – and you might feel you could walk

to that wind farm on Burbo Bank, or walk

to Wales and reach Snowdonia’s ranges,

despite the channels you cannot see,

and the waves encroaching which you cannot hear,

let alone see, because of the constant sound

of endless, restless, distant waters.

 

Here are such large skies of shifting clouds,

long veils of rain, unbroken sunlight –

such immense firmaments. This is a place

of horizons and mirage, of disquiet,

and exhilaration, like a lost element,

a lost dimension, as if you might glimpse

heaven or angels, or whatever else

may be at the world’s edge.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
2 Comments
POETRY

NOT VERY FAR FROM HERE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.4K views

Land almost encompassed by salty waters,

the Wirral’s peninsula is bounded by

the bird-thronged Dee Estuary to the west,

to the east, the Mersey Estuary

with memories of famine and slaves,

and on its north coast –  that stretches straight

as a nautical ruler from Hilbre Point

to Perch Rock – Liverpool Bay, the Irish Sea.

 

Tradition has it that the Wirral begins

two longbow arrows fall from Chester’s

Roman walls, the city where I write.

There were Viking and Saxon settlements,

their place names surviving – Thingwall, Irby,

Eastham, Moreton. Nelson’s Lady Hamilton

was born in Ness. The carrier Ark Royal

was launched at Cammell Lairds in Birkenhead,

the place of Wilfred Owen’s schooldays,

and one of the first towns to raise a Bantams

Battalion – a thousand small men destined

for slaughter. Port Sunlight was the self-made

Lord Leverhulme’s fiefdom of soap works,

art gallery and war memorial. Some

of England’s poorest wards are in Ellesmere Port,

a town canals and oil and cars created.

 

There was the ‘wyldrenesse of Wyrale’; wooded,

shallow valleys between low sandstone ridges,

north to south; at its base, a narrow valley

formed by glacial meltwater run-off –

from what would become the two estuaries –

that made Wirral a proper island

until the silts of time grew copses and farmland.

 

This almost island of my imaginings –

wild thoughts: settlements razed, burning;

the dead unburied under charred beams;

lost orphans, in their thousands, wandering

the ruined fields – not very far from here,

barely two arrows fall.

 

 

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

SPOILS OF WAR

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.6K views

For more than eighty years the wind, the blown sand,

the salty air, and the high tides have softened

the geometrical edges of brick,

and concrete, and cut stone – detritus

of the eighteen-month long Liverpool Blitz

of nightly sirens, fires, and devastation,

removed, lorryload after lorryload,

for the maintenance of morale, from the

maritime city’s mercantile centre,

and dumped, just beyond the mouth

of the Mersey’s broad estuary,

on the beach between Crosby and Blundellsands,

that faces south-west across the shipping lanes

of Liverpool Bay towards North Wales,

Ireland, the Azores – imperceptibly

becoming again merely the minerals

they were made from, dispersing speck by speck

far into the oceans.

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

SAND FLATS AT WEST KIRBY

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read2.1K views

At low water the sand flats stretch unbroken

down the Dee estuary’s English coast

to the reed beds of Parkgate and Burton Marsh;

stretch beyond the islands in the river’s mouth –

Hilbre, Middle Eye and Little Eye –

towards the wind turbines in Liverpool Bay;

then along the head of the Peninsula,

past Meols, Leasowe, Wallasey and New Brighton,

to join the mudflats of the Mersey.

 

At low water the sand flats are safe to cross

to the islands – and you might feel you could walk

to that wind farm on Burbo Bank, or walk

to Wales and reach Snowdonia’s ranges,

despite the channels you cannot see,

and the waves encroaching which you cannot hear,

let alone see, because of the constant sound

of endless, restless, distant waters.

 

Here are such large skies of shifting clouds,

long veils of rain, unbroken sunlight –

such immense firmaments. This is a place

of horizons and mirage, of disquiet,

and exhilaration, like a lost element,

a lost dimension, as if you might glimpse

heaven or angels, or whatever else

may be at the world’s edge.

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
3 Comments
POETRY

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

David Selzer By David Selzer7 Comments1 min read2.4K views

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter – tale

of adultery and obsession –

was published in 1850. In the year

the Crimean War began, he became

the U.S. Consul in Liverpool,

a post gifted by his friend the President.

He did not like the job despite the fees

from the cargoes of cotton and molasses

hoisted ashore. Whether in a Hansom cab

home to his family in lodgings in the town,

on the steam ferry to the rented villa

in the gated park on the Wirral,

or on the train to the rented house

on Southport’s Esplanade he felt too close

to the piratical-looking tars,

who washed up on the consulate steps.

 

His friend, Herman Melville – whose Moby Dick (tale

of arrogance and obsession) was published

in 1851 – had once been

a young sailor lost in the town’s quayside stews.

When he and his family did the Grand Tour

they set off from Liverpool, staying a week

with the Hawthornes in Southport. One evening

the writers took their cigars among the dunes

and, facing west across the twilight waves

of Liverpool Bay, spoke of providence,

eternity. Courageous innovators

that they were, no doubt each secretly,

that night, thought the other might have penned

the supreme fiction of their elusive land.

But the dark fields of the Republic

were rolling towards them – Little Bighorn

and Wounded Knee, Shiloh and Gettysburg.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
7 Comments
POETRY

OMENS

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.9K 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.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
4 Comments