Jenny Hamlett
Visiting the Old Man on Gugh
Europe’s end, a bare scratch of land
before a horizon of white water and rock teeth.
She comes here, across a bar of sand
she knows will disappear when the tide runs in.
Islands are like families
against which the sea breaks.
She will not think of this, walks
the clean short turf between rocks and ferns
through the pink season, campion, foxgloves
the single-petalled wild dog-rose.
She climbs the heath. Something waits
above her, casting a shadow even at mid-day.
She stops. A tower or a god?
Her fingers explore the uneven-ness of rock.
The Old Man speaks of all that’s gone
and all that’s yet to come, carved on now.
She presses her face to the standing stone
so long that when she turns to trace
her footprints on the bar, the sea has taken them.
She laughs. No matter. She could live on islands
where rough waves ring the shores
like soft white scarves.
Page(s) 28
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The