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Menai Straits

POETRY

A VIEW OF THE STRAITS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.8K 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

ACROSS THE WATERS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views

Walking – toward the town – down Henlys Lane,

its low, lichen covered dry stone walls

adorned with bird’s-foot trefoil, its borders

with cow parsley and, where run-off

gathers from Baron’s Hill, red campion,

we note ahead, amongst the cattle,

the usual, large flock of herring gulls,

facing south in the low-lying marshy field.

All as we have come to know and like.

But, today, we hear an explosion – loud

enough but too workaday to be thunder.

We stop and look beyond the library,

the castle and the Straits to search the mauve

galleries of Bethesda’s slate quarries.

Nothing disturbs the distant, hazy stillness.

 

Later, on the way to the car, we pass

the unfinished Plantagenet castle

the final subjection of the Welsh made

redundant and hear a second blasting

from across the waters – and I know

how favoured our generation was removed

from wars, and how, like flowers, tenuous,

robust, our path to the future or the past.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE EDGE OF HISTORY

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

From the holiday cottage near the top

of Allt Goch Bach – Little Red Hill – west

and south is ancient woodland of ash, oak,

beech and holly. North, down the steep incline,

is Beaumaris – with its redundant castle,

gaol and quays, its narrow streets and low,

thick walled houses. East are the Menai Straits,

the A55 and the Carnedd range.

 

Some say the ‘red’ was the blood of the last

of the Druids – or the Royalists.  Now

the hill is covered with spacious ‘80s

bespoke bungalows for wealthy pensioners.

From here, there is a landscape of invasion:

Roman, Saxon, Viking, Plantagenet

(Norse, of course, by any other name) –

and, last, the so-called ‘English’ (residents

and tourists), accidental imperialists.

Inland, Welsh thrives. Here, it is seldom heard.

 

On Sundays, stray notes and chords from the town’s

brass band drift up – Italian opera,

a Methodist hymn. I cherish this place:

the hill; the town; the changing beauty,

shapes and colours of the tidal straits

and treeless mountains; the sense of being

always on the edge of history.

Where I live, over the mountains, far away,

is now a disunited kingdom – violent,

corrupt, gangrenous with injustice and greed.

 

 

 

 


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POETRY

SAFELY THROUGH THE DARK

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

At twilight from the hills across the Straits, a sudden

drift of smoke – then a fire’s deep orange eye blinked.

We talked of cruising the Nile; of moon rise and sun set,

of the narrow compass of the earth’s curve;

the river pilots’ open armed, hand-on-heart salaams;

and the stars rushing through the night.

 

Later and sleepless in the early hours,

I kept watch at the bedroom window.

The hotel sign lit a faded Union flag,

threadbare at its outer edges.

The only hint of the far shore was

sporadic lights on the A55.

 

But the stars were unequivocal. In a cloudless,

unpolluted sky, how they teemed!

I saw the constellations pass

and the random magnificence of things revealed.

Understandably, you preferred to sleep.

And journey safely through the dark.

 

 

Note: The poem was originally published on the site in October 2009, under the title, BULKELEY HOTEL, BEAUMARIS, YNYS MÔN –  https://davidselzer.com/2009/10/

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE WRECK OF THE ROTHESAY CASTLE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.7K views

A dirty night in the Menai Straits…

a paddle steamer on a sudden sandbank –

pounding itself, pounding itself, pounding…

seas silencing the hullabaloo.

 

For the last time, the lifeboat pulls for the shore.

Two lovers, roped to the mast, drown their joy.

 

All turned to chalk on the dark sea bed.

Far, far above was the muffled cry

of gulls, the cormorant’s swift shadow.

 

 

 

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