…is our sort of place – an island only
at spring tides. Sant Dwynwen, patroness
of lovers, was a princess, virgin, nun.
Her true love test required fresh bread crumbs,
a linen kerchief, a well, an eel
– and an optimistic lad and lass.
The saint’s shrine was popular until
the Puritan heave-ho – although, even now,
perhaps, in the earliest of summer’s dawns
or when mists rise or by full moonlight
some lovers will come to find the well.
Beyond the lighthouse, the cormorants and
distant rocks, beyond the edge of Ireland, passed
the Azores and the Sargasso Sea – where
eels breed and die – beyond the far Antilles,
the Atlantic and the Amazon embrace.
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By David Selzer