Splashing, dashing waves

in the shoaled harbour: a ship --


it is sailing past.

'I hear the Father say,

"Your patience indeed is shallow
- but my restive child, rest and pray,
find in me your refuge,
I am all you need today."

The Lord is harbour. He is anchor.
And once this season passes,
once the channels open
He will be our compass

and we will sail.'

Trezūnger, last house along the esplanade
Stares out towards Polruan Point. In the growing storm
I feel Atlantic.
St Catherine stands
Over the harbour, laying her claim to the sea
Under the watchful gaze of the eye of Neptune. All the while
The trees whisper to the waves in the wind and release
Leaves and autumnal fragrance. Clustered cottages shoal
Whitewashed in the lee by the ford-over-the-stones-by-the-beach.
The tide and the air pressure low as nature ***** a deep breath ready for the storm

Cockcrow harbour:
the gulls whining like tethered dogs
about rooftops
paliophobic cars and
grounded vessels..
Look:
on the hoary horizon
a glaucous strip
beguils
with backwater.
Not putting on a show
the frigid sea benumbed..
Easily,
with a tail of emerald jelly
skim a vanishing lane off that
lustrous sheet
and watch
the trailblazing mainland
scuttle.

Now,
Only scattered dreaming is possible.

In it's bachelor pad,
cradling over crinkles,
away from the meretriciosness
of validating the real by sharing it,
THE WIND
blusters off any veneer.
Here,
stale but spry,
fare your way around the inoffensive isle
to it's most shyest of harbours:
a mouth full of silver
saving it's breath.
The windows facing the sea
seem
black & white,
their wooden frames hooked to the wind,
the splattered gulls meow
your name
in a way
that's
personal.
Of course comes to mind.
The pines
are demanding a visit,
They're whispering
so you can hear them,
each as different as every snore,
these pines know
how to grow in the sand
and still reach for
the Nimbostratus with heads in unison.
The spaces
between their trunks illuminating
the blazing needles
raining down
painting the ground
familiar
to your lover's
skin texture:
Feel her closeness
from jilted borderwatchtowers
as she speads her mire
like no one's watching:
weedy and sugared
with bellflowers,
the waves in her shallow armpit
billeting a pair of white swans:
demurely they float
sometimes as pillows and sometimes
as question marks..
Go ask the seasoned locals,
they say the bones she parked
when she let her ice sheet melt
are portals
to her noble underbelly.

Hidden in the woods
reminiscent of your heart,
the red
tank-sized stone
is sealed,
but what the lighting reach cannot
the rain shall sluice apart
dumbly.
And though her hair has
come to be
the moss
black and hoarse
as sailor's beard,
there is still time.
The void says
her noisy neighbour is nothing
to die for.
The theadbear car with absent doors
incites
to drive her
in reverse gear
to the first few
days of holidays:
her golden locks a-blaze,
her arm around your
hind-sighted doppelganger.

Mountains
recede into the dimness of evening
As though God
took this image of sky and horizon
and lowered the contrast
until we were left
with the impression of the Olympics
but none of their usual detail.
In this way
night
overtakes the entire landscape;
stealing along the line of the ocean,
blurring the edges of boats
buildings
and shore,
until the world is inhabited
solely by Soft Things,
and our eyes
are filled with sleep as we watch them.

Minds
drifting
towards thoughts of cloudy blankets
and warm beds.
This,
is how our city puts us to sleep,
as the watch lights,
appear twinkling
in the dusky sea.

there’s a barnacle scar
deeply ingrained
on the basalt stack
at mark thirty two
whispering summer winds
scented oil
cotton and roe
drift
as waves brush
and shape
the sandstone shore

the briny air
and lost erratic
set a tone to this
pollyanna portrait
it's andrews undulations
and gifted benches
its concessions
and traces of the barry burn
its sculpted driftwood
and sanko lines
make this picture
almost perfect

children play
as venom spews
from the caterwaul pair
those odd looking mates
casting smiles
with arrested despair
settling shots
swiping bugs
dipping and darting
as photo men
and muscles
and long neck seabirds
make their turn

the hunched hoody
and his sorted sidekick
get their fill
(of moss and rubble ~ chubby and kelp)
nice to meet your acquaintance
the pho man would say
an odd drop
and ironic turn
from those horrific corners
of timeless desperation
down by cannon bridge

harbor seals
and carriage horse
are fronted by
raven shade
jolly tides pause
in quiet bays
(with curious looters
and *** pickers)
sand merchants
and field totems
all streamed by the light

cirrus strands
blanket the
outer edge
hovering craft
and shimmering willows
bolt the evening frame
blood orange
and tethered
with a filtered glare
bottle-nose dolphins
and seabirds
(and shifting tides)
are all settling in
for the long night stay

Lord, save us from our pygmy dreams
That bear fruit long before
We leave safe harbour.
Send us out to only come back home
Once we have defeated land-locked fear,
Hurdled every heaving horizon
And found the stars.

We'll return to show you
Our deep wild bruises
And war torn scars.
We'll submit our worn down egos
And weathered souls.
And only then gladly enter
Eternal harbour.