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Ynys Mon

SAPPHIRE

By David SelzerAugust 24, 20113 Comments1 min read1.9K views

We came here first maybe fifty years ago –

Porth Trecastell aka Cable Bay

(on Ynys Môn aka Anglesey) –

a small Iron Age hill fort on one headland,

a Neolithic grave on the other,

and a telephone cable to Ireland

in between. This bank holiday the bay

is busy – paddlers, bathers, canoeists.

In the gated burial chamber –

Barclodiad y Gawres, which translates,

‘the full apron of the giantess’ –

its prehistoric graffiti secured

against vandals, a pair of swallows

has nested. We can hear the nestlings.

Seeing us, the parents, beaks replete

with insects, perch on the outer gate,

waiting patiently for the lubberly,

flightless giants – one with a movable eye

that shafts like lightning – to depart.

When we do, they fly past, a steel-blue flash,

an iridescence, into the dark tomb.

From the dolmen’s entrance, on the horizon

is Holyhead Mountain. If the earth were flat,

we could see to Ireland – where the weathers

and the myths are made. In sunlight as sharp as

wings, the sea is so many shades of blue:

cerulean, aquamarine, cobalt,

amethyst, turquoise – and sapphire,

a token of all our married years.

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By David Selzer

LOOKING FOR PUFFINS: SOUTH STACK REVISITED – POEM FOR OUR DAUGHTER

By David SelzerDecember 20, 20090 Comments1 min read1.5K views

South Stack, Ynys Môn, SCES©2009 — South Stack, Ynys Môn, ©Sylvia Selzer 2009

Of course, by the time it’s my turn at the ’scope

the bugger’s turned its back. ‘It is a puffin,’

reassures the RSPB girl – and,

since she’s pretty and young, I believe

that what I see is not one of the teeming,

noisy, noisome, nesting guillemots,

razorbills or gulls. A hat trick: ageism,

sexism, anthropomorphism – plus

being churlish as a bear rather than

valiant as a lion. Intriguing opposites. Grrr!

We came here last when she was five or six.

Decades on, she stands with her lover

at a turn in the steps – both happy,

both blooming with her longed-for future,

and wrestling with the breeze for your camera.

Some gulls have eschewed the crowded cliffs

to nest in the lighthouse’s disused kitchen garden.

We lean on the wall like pig farmers.

There is a dead chick amongst the gooseberries.

A living one stands, yes, surprised, startled but resolute

though even here winds roar like lions or bears.

I hold my breath…1,2,3…for us all.

Note: this piece has been subsequently published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer.

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By David Selzer

BULKELEY HOTEL, BEAUMARIS, YNYS MÔN

By David SelzerOctober 30, 20092 Comments1 min read3.1K 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.

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By David Selzer

BRYN CELLI DDU, YNYS MÔN

By David SelzerSeptember 17, 20090 Comments1 min read1.8K views

This March day is replete with the bright warmth

of spring and ewes bleating for their lambs.

Cropped, walled grass rolls like a green, chequered sea.

The name translates: ‘Hillock of the black grove,

the dark cell’. The sacred trees have gone:

with the Druids, out-run by Rome’s legions;

and the wheat fields, which fed all of Cymru

before the Plantagenets came. High ground

and megalith survive: sign-posted, fenced.

A passage of shale slabs opens on a round

chamber, holding this afternoon’s sun

like a child: stones dressed five thousand years ago

and angled exactly north east south west.

My fingers explore incisions that could be

accident or arcane inscriptions.

South east, beyond the straits, the horizon

is mountains – volcanic, sandstone, slate, shale –

unmoved for hundreds of millions of years.

Working – with bone, flint, empiricism

in wood, earth, stone – death is imminent

and a nonsense. Graffiti are triumph

and denial. This pasture was arable,

oakwood, ice. This hand’s span, which dies with me,

stretches from long, long before the Flood.

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By David Selzer