Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

D. A. Prince

print this page

Kittiwakes

March, and under Tyne Bridge their metalled screams
scrape the green girders just ahead
of spring and softer winds. The light
is inland and peopled, chattering and spread
uphill, upriver, not the empty seas
they wintered on, not the salt
of mid-Atlantic weather. Sea-spray white,
their wing-tips dipped in ink, they’re back to find
their anchored nests, where soon new chicks will squeal
for sand eels, streaking stones
with their graffiti, fitted sideways on
gaunt ledges, corners, angles - rented homes
on a man-made cliff below the traffic’s drone.
A lesson in adapting, changing; how to
span from city buzz to silent deep,
until the August breeze brings news to stir
some sea-green memory.
                                       They’re gone - but still
bridging the city to its past, the wide
and vaster distant waters, the wild sea.

 

 

Page(s) 24

Back to top