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storms

THE SWELLIES, AFON MENAI, ST VALENTINE’S DAY

Lovers are as mariners, navigators

in crowded, intricate sea lanes of

momentary loathing and lasting passion.

Pilots guided vessels into the straits:

from the north, between Trwyn-du’s dark rocks

and the wicked sands of Dutchman Bank;

from the south, between Abermenai

and Fort Belan over the Caernavon Bar;

and then through The Swellies – Pwll Ceris,

‘Pool of Love’ – where the surging high tides whirl

round Ynys Gored Goch, the wild waves

tawny and their foam white as drifting snow.

Lovers are as sailors in insane storms

and intimate calms, ever watchful

for icebergs and mutinies, heading always

to the Hesperides, course set forever

westwards into the sun.

 

 

 

GOOD HOPE

Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA
Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA © Sylvia Selzer 2009

At her back, the South Atlantic’s rolling seas,

those ice blue waters, break, skittering

on the silver sands. Burgeoning with child,

she smiles for the camera, as always

optimistically. Mussels encrust the rock

she leans on, kelp bobs like seals on the foam

and Southern Right Whales blow almost out of sight.

Due west, across the unbroken miles,

is Buenos Aires and the teeming hectares

of the Americas. We turn inland. An ostrich

high steps through proteas and heathers,

a tortoise navigates the undergrowth.

Some flowers bloom only after fire. Good choice

to be here on this cape of storms and wrecks.

She carries so many of our pasts –

refugees and indigenes, blacksmiths

and architects, poets and sea captains…

That first image of the future, of something

commonplace, something extraordinary,

will surface without summons, rise instantly,

engulf her forever.