Tag Archives

Parkgate

POETRY

THE OLD SEAWATER BATHS, PARKGATE…

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read484 views

…is now a bosky car park – owned and maintained

by the borough council, and enhanced

by two charities: one for birds, the other

for history and the built environment.

Over the remains of the wall along

what was once the seaward side of the baths

is a belvedere across bird-teeming hectares

of reeds and runnels, and, beyond, the long

low mauve and lilac of Halkyn Mountain.

Though no Ur or Babylon, this small space

and its short history is a metaphor

for humankind’s enterprising and

egregious journey to date through the cosmos.

 

At the head of the Dee estuary were

salt marshes with a navigable channel

through to the international port of Chester.

The marshes were drained, filled and the land

‘reclaimed’ – as if the sea had stolen it –

to build ships, and make chains and anchors.

Silt began to block the channel so the river

was canalised – which has caused the east coast

of the estuary to silt and become

marshland. As the hectares of reeds became

multitudes making the sea a distant,

occasional thing the baths had to close.

 

They were most popular in the ‘Thirties,

despite the Depression and the long grey lines

of unemployed men in flat caps. Bathers

came via the railway – now gone –

or by car. There was parking for a thousand

Rileys, and Rovers, and Singers, the sun

reflecting from their bonnets in fields

next to the baths, and now pastoral again.

And, like any ancient civilisation,

on a ruined wall is a graffito:

in a ‘Thirties’ three dimensional font,

and shades of aquamarine – ‘The Old Seabaths’.

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
3 Comments
POETRY

THE PARADE, PARKGATE, WIRRAL

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.8K views

Because the Dublin packet’s draught was too great

for it to moor, irrespective of tides,

beside the quay, it would anchor in the roads

of the estuary. Passengers and goods

would be ferried to and fro by long boat.

 

Where the ship hoved-to a lagoon has been cut

among the fields of reed beds that thrive

on the rich silt accumulated, over

two centuries, this side of the river.

When sea-going vessels could no longer

sail the narrowing channels, when only

shrimping boats could find open water,

but the sandy beach was not yet overgrown

the place became a seaside resort.

The Customs House on the sea wall was razed.

A donkey stand was built on its foundations.

 

And there we sit today, contemplatively,

enjoying our Caesar Salad wraps,

watching a little egret on the lagoon –

and imagining George Frederick Handel,

for example, embark for Dublin

and the first performance of ‘The Messiah’,

and Dean Jonathan Swift returning home

to compose ‘A Modest Proposal’

concerning the children of the Irish poor.

Down river, too far to identify,

a raptor is circling; beyond, like

nets cast, flocks of waders rise and land.

On the horizon – where the river

and the Irish Sea mingle out of sight –

is the suspicion of white wind turbines.

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
4 Comments
POETRY

SAND FLATS AT WEST KIRBY

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.9K 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

ACROSS THE ESTUARY

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

The beds of varicoloured reeds, fields almost,

stretch north and south along this bank for miles,

and westwards, nearly to Wales, across the wide,

silted river. Unseen marsh creatures scarcely

disturb the grasses. Egrets and herons

fly in and out of hidden lagoons.

Before silt, from here, the Dublin packet sailed –

with G.F. Handel and Jonathan Swift.

On the opposite shore are the ruins

of Flint Castle where Richard was dethroned –

‘…night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.’

Sun catches a window on Halkyn Mountain.

 

This year marks the first centenary

of the Amritsar massacre, the second

of Peterloo – but even now there are

doubters, equivocators, who minimise

the carnage, exculpate the perpetrators.

 

In the small car park behind us a car door

opens briefly – the radio announces,

in a public school accent, that there will be

never ending dystopia ‘until’

and ‘unless’. Today is the first of summer,

hot, windless, with dragonflies and bees

abounding. This remorseless marshland is

unequivocal – earth and vegetation

are ruthless, immaculate remembrancers.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

SIDE BY SIDE

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read1.6K views

For you and me, like Henry Moore’s bronze
kings and queens, there is something very
special about sitting together
on a public seat with a majestic view…

***

On the erstwhile Exxon Valdez ride
at the ’90s Epcot Centre, plunging
above Alaska with a dying friend…

Snow falling on Halkyn Mountain over
the estuary from Parkgate promenade
and a fire briefly flaring then dying
by Flint Castle on the distant shore…

A child begging on the corniche at Luxor,
singing, ‘Michael, row the boat ashore,’
and the crowded ferry crossing the Nile…

‘John Williams, Plumber, A Deganwy Lad’,
with a view of Penmaenmawr – Wagnerian,
mauve against the bright sky above Ynys Môn –
the bench washed away in a freak storm…

Beside The Lake in Central Park, early
September before 9/11,
the row boats empty in the humid air…

***

Relaxing on the cruiser at Edfu
with mint tea after a temple visit –
on the road, a camel and donkey
passing in the back of a pick-up…

On the steps of the Community Hall
where Mandela trained to box, next to
a serious queue for a bouncy castle…

Opposite Conwy Castle, the curlews
and the shelduck on the sand banks at low tide –
in the channel along the far bank
a water skier buzzing, buzzing…

Next to the river and the Peter the Great
fantasy statue, in the Monument Park,
with Dzerzhinsky facing his future…

Market Street, Jozi, with the theatre
and bookstalls – and its environs safe
again but at what cost to the homeless
who squatted in the windowless buildings…

***

On the topmost row of the amphitheatre
at Epidaurus, dusk settling among
the olive groves and the tourist buses…

On the beach at Alvor – where Portugal
ceded Mozambique to Frelimo
in a country club – with North Africa
seemingly just beyond the horizon…

In the grounds of the Hector Pieterson
Museum, with the liberated traffic
of Orlando West careering by…

Etna rising in mist from Taormina’s
Giardini Villa Communale
with its avenue of olive trees,
each a memorial to the naval dead…

In Polesdon Lacey’s rose garden,
designed by the playwright Sheridan,
with cattle lowing below the terrace…

***

Ah, to have such promising prospects, the first
of Disneyland, the last of England – somewhere,
looking forward, to imagine the worst,
to speak of the past, to learn to know blessings…

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
3 Comments
POETRY

THE OPTIMISM OF ENGINEERS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read1.9K views

For John Huddart

 

Whichever way you approach the town of Fflint,

on the coast road east or west, down Halkyn

Mountain, from the Dee Estuary, you see

the towers first – Richard, Bolingbroke and Castle

Heights, three 1960s, multi-storey

social housing blocks – not the castle.

 

Richard Plantagenet, Richard of Bordeaux,

King of England, surrendered to his cousin

and childhood friend, Henry of Bolingbroke,

in the inner bailey of the castle,

nearly seven hundred years ago.

Richard’s great grandfather had it built –

by engineers, carpenters, charcoal burners,

diggers, dykers, masons, smiths, woodmen

from the counties of Chester, Lancaster,

Leicester, Lincoln, Salop, Stafford, Warwick –

based on a French model. Logistically –

being merely a day’s ride from Chester

and having the estuary lap its walls –

it was well placed to punish the Welsh.

 

In the ‘70s, as well as the Heights,

Courtaulds dominated the town, its mills

employing ten thousand. Now there is

MacDonalds, Sainsbury’s, a Polski Sklep.

The castle’s ruins have been preserved, of course,

made accessible, and its setting landscaped.

Across the wide river are the white houses

of Parkgate, where the packets to Ireland

would moor offshore in the roads.

Canalising the Dee to keep Chester

a port for sea-going fly boats and cutters

silted that side of the estuary,

transformed Liverpool and the Mersey.

 

A purpose-made barge passes, Afon

Dyfrdwy, taking an A380 wing

from Airbus at Broughton to the port

at Mostyn, some twenty miles, for shipment,

by purpose-made ferries, to Bordeaux.

As if on cue, a Beluga, an Airbus

Super Transporter, its nose like the fish’s

head, banks south east for Airbus at Toulouse.

 

The castle was closed for a time because of

vandalism and under age drinking.

Two teenage youths, wielding a six-pack each

of Sainsbury’s St Cervois lager,  pass

beneath the curtain wall. Laughing,

they offer the cans to two elderly

anglers returning from the river,

who decline, embarrassed, and move on.  It is

one o’clock on a weekday. The two lads,

both opening a can and showering

each other, run towards the shore, cursing.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
2 Comments

Recent Posts