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Ian Caws

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The Dunes

 

Storm light draws pencil lines around the dunes;
Old weather, brought up by south-westerlies,
Banks them into sky. West of the river,
Where I rarely go, sand sprinkles the stones
Of an old fort and a path through the grass.
One storm might clear the dunes if I could raise
It or might show where I could recover
My wonder when I first looked on this place.

Those days, I was not to be distracted,
Indivisible, like a prime number,
And watched flocks of birds change shape in the wind.
I never spoke of the dunes then, acted
My part only for the birds flying high
Over the sea. That I can remember,
Along with the sense that something I found
Would flourish on the cold shore and would stay.

I am talking before the dunes, at least
Before the dunes as they are now, growing
Nightly over the horizon, old boards
From the shifting path, upended then lost;
Of things I saw that never reappeared,
Not this side of a storm. I am saying
Today that I have remembered the birds
But can see blood and feathers on the road.

 

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