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Mersey

POETRY

DIVERSIONS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read335 views

Two sets of works on local busy A roads

on the same day, morning and afternoon,

diverted me down lanes I had not travelled

for decades: eastwards to Beeston Castle

on its sandstone rock, westwards to Essar’s

refinery on the Mersey marshes;

spring lanes edged with cow parsley, and banked

with hawthorn hedges flowering; Friesians

glimpsed through a gate, a ploughed field’s furrows

the turned colour of mahogany;

through Saxon settlements – Foulk Stapelford

and Hargrave, Picton Gorse and Little Stanney,

Hoofield and Wervin – as if the Romans

had never come, and the Normans never would;

from doomsday parish to doomsday parish;

sunlight shifting, seasons unfolding,

the past almost within grasp.

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

AN AMERICAN DECADE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.4K views

We watched the moon landing on a small tv –

black and white, of course – in a house built

the year before the First World War began,

when Britain’s was the richest, most powerful

empire the world had ever known, committing,

like a recidivist, seemingly endless

crimes against humanity in Africa

and South East Asia, its offences

in southern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands,

Australasia and the Americas

having already become history.

Not far from the house was the Mersey

and the Port of Liverpool (built on cotton),

at the Empire’s zenith the world’s busiest.

 

TVs in the States, of course, had been colour

since the 50s.  The ‘60s – which ended

with Old Glory’s triumph in the Space Race

over the Soviet Empire – included

the assassination of a president,

a descendant of Irish immigrants,

and the lynching of three black men, descendants

of African slaves.

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

SAND FLATS AT WEST KIRBY

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read2K 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.

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments2 min read1.6K views

Her previous enclosure was surrounded

by a wire mesh fence four metres high

and a low hedge, so she was used to seeing

big people from the knees up and small people

with heads only. Now she paces to and fro,

back and fore, in front of a plate glass

viewing window, as if on sentry-go.

We are a yard apart me and this fellow

being, whose shining bronze eyes slide away

each time they see mine. Every ten turns or so

she stops, lowers her head and roars – a sound

so obvious yet unexpected,

so profound, so primordial it

obscures all others, and all thought.

 

Another lioness, her sister, rests

after feeding – as does the lion,

in a statuesque pose, on a faux rock,

concrete made to look like sandstone,

and heated, as if warmed by a tropic sun.

Smaller than African lions, these were hunted

by Assyrian kings, and one had a thorn

removed by Androcles. These three are conserved,

preserved, pampered, even, as if stars

on a movie set, waiting to be called.

Maybe they will breed in their new enclosure

on the edge of the zoo, past the butterflies,

prodigious breeders in captivity.

 

We must seem an eccentric species:

smelling edible but always beyond reach;

a herd that disappears into the night;

standing about in the light, and staring,

forever making inconsequential sounds;

and one or two of us every day

throwing away haunches of raw meat.

 

Beyond the heavy duty outer fences –

built as if bordering a prison yard –

are empty pastoral fields; a canal

built to carry ceramics unbroken

from the Potteries to the Mersey;

ancient woodland; a church with a clock tower,

its foundations pre-Reformation;

and, in the distance, an oil refinery.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

ON BENLLECH BEACH 2020

David Selzer By David Selzer8 Comments1 min read1.9K views

We have moved once to accommodate the tide

on this August strand, crowded with many

who otherwise would have been in the Algarve

or on some island in the Aegean.

At least the sands are free this year of the Christians

whose jocular misanthropy of games

of tug o’ war takes up so much space.

 

High tide is still nine minutes away,

and the beach here rises just perceptibly –

but ramparts have gone, and a castle keep.

Someone has placed a child’s spade in the sand

guessing where the flow will end, the ebb begin –

or knowing it will be so, for the sea turns

just as it laps against the blue blade.

 

We are so pleased watching the waves recede,

as if we had outwitted them, outlived them

almost, we do not notice the spade has gone,

its modest owner emulating Canute.

On the horizon, anchored until high tide,

container ships and tankers are moving now

safe to cross the Bar, and sail into the Mersey.

 

Curious to face the sea as if facing

the future. Though the waters surge and swell

with many metaphors, for the most part

only the inevitable happens –

like the wave, the invisible tsunami,

that will strike these islands’ shores this coming

New Year’s Day. Something the hateful, the greedy,

and the ignorant have willed – for a chimera,

a mere abstraction.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

CROSSING THE COMPASS

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

When I reach the half landing I will always

pause and at least glance through the long window

that frames garden, high wall, terraced roofs

and sky. I saw, one time, against roseate clouds

lit by the setting sun and billowing

in an easterly wind, dark like a line

of dancing letters, flock after flock

of black-headed gulls, crossing the compass

south east from the drowned meadows of the Dee

to the Mersey’s low tide mud flats north west.

 

For the last of the stragglers to pass,

it took long enough for a poem to catch,

for that slow, flickering, certain fire to take.

And I thought of caribou on the Tundra,

salmon in the Aleutians, swallows

over Timbuktu – and our loved ones,

their small migration north.

 

 

 

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