A Dead Dolphin

They came upon it
snout to sea
turned in waiting
for the wave
to take it home.

Alas, it was too far in,
landed among the spoils
of the spring tides.

In wonder at this
once-living mammal
struck by death
in the sand,

She, kneeling
with due reverence
and no little wonder,

allowed her fingers
to remove a single tooth
from its open jaw.  
She looked up at him,

questions in her eyes.
He shook his head.
‘Best not’.


Blue Bell

Being the time
of belles in the wood,
fitfully blue
amongst the still-nodding daffs,
it seemed wholly appropriate,
after walking all day
in a northerly chill,
to tea at The Bluebell
on chocolate ice cream,
rhubarb jam (with a scone)
and a *** of ‘builders.


The Washover

Once a road
now a washover
a desert stretch
empty of everything
except sand

in the deep tracks
left by a 4 X 4
he laid prone
so to disappear the horizon
from the photograph he took
of this singular stretch

where one winter storm
the sea had usurped the land
and daily since held the upper hand


The Collection

Framed in the camera’s view
his collection of shells
and assorted detritus
lies on a square metre of sand
ordered only by the hand
of a diurnal sea
silent still
yet waiting
for the incoming tide


Roe Deer

Roe deer
(my dear
hand held
fingers warm)
two ears
above the bushy bank
white **** bounding
with a floating leap
clearing the fence


An Evening Walk

passing the pub
two smokers
by the church
five men remembered
dead so young
up the lane
a distant house
hiding in park land
now the cliff top
falling storm by storm
onto a shallow beach
a cold sea

back and facing now
the setting sun
a circuit taken
passing a still pigeon
turned to stone
sitting atop
a garden fence


The Owl

Short-eared it may be
but it heard us
walking the tough grass

but just to make sure
it described for our view
a circuit displaying
the complexity of its plumage
and the ever-alert confidence
of its so silent flight


The Bathroom Chair

The bedroom viewed
the bright flowering of
oil seed ****;
its spacious en suite
had a well-placed chair.
He remembered a family tale
(he’d heard it twice)
of their architect who said,
when surveying
a bathroom to be, ‘Of course’,
you’ll be needing space for a chair’.

So imagining the blushes
of her mother, he considered
this quietly upholstered chair
with its paisley pattern, where
in the morning he would,
and in comfort, stare
and survey the loveliness
of her daughter there.


At Lunch

At lunch - they sat
facing each other
over the picnic table -
where once a row
of cottages stood
before the northerly winds,
where only the tiles of their floors
remained to further pattern
the morning shadow
of the lighthouse near.

They spoke of childhood,
and her making of collections,
his spectrum of autism,
and how it might be one day
in a further future when he,
an elderly man, might need
her graceful arm to lean on.

He told her gently
how his passion
for her lovely self
(in all its quarters)
seemed quite undimmed,
and, as he held her fingers
in the April sunshine,
hoped that it would
always, always be so . . .

Her warm smile
(across the picnic table)
made any further words,
that might have been,
fall into the wind
and fly towards the sea.


To the Lighthouse**

Feet sure on the stone step,
the climb remembered well,
43 to the next stage,
39 to the second,
passing the curved doors,
the no-more flaking paint,
the damp (still) and the sound
(always) of the wrapping wind.
On a windowed ledge
she saw
the half-devoured prey
of a resting hawk,
and on and up to
under the lamp room,
where a fall of linen cloth,
stained by the sea,
marked with groins’ rust
once hung;
and further up,
in a small space under the lamp,
its windows now engraved
with the smallest of sailing boats.
Now one saw in the glass
a long-past sight of
tiny luggers plying their catch
of sand and gravel in the still grey
tumultuous, uncertain sea below.