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

  Low tide. A school party crosses the causeway to St Michael’s Mount. My way is across the exposed beach. I scramble over slippery rocks, rounding the corner squelch into rotting seaweed deeper than my boots. Once, seaweed was used as fertiliser; we collected bagsfull. Now we use grass mowings. Farmers use chemicals.
   I’m glad to climb the steps onto the coast path and stride out. An inviting granite bench above the path, dedicated to Lady Susan St Levan, 1934 - 2003. A good view of the back of St Michael’s Mount and the round towered, fairy-tale castle, once the home of Lady Susan. The Cornish name for the Mount means ‘white rock in the wood’. It is said that at very low tides the remains of trees can be seen beneath the sea. As sea levels rise, how long before the island is submerged? Behind the Mount, the low skyline of the Penwith moors; to the left morning sun glints off the windows of Mousehole.
   Silence. This south-coast sea is calm and flat, shading from Mediterranean blue to tropical turquoise. Not a wave sound. A helicopter passes over Penzance on the way to the Isles of Scilly. A trio of walkers talking loudly of time-shares in the Black Forest. Silence again.

                                 celandines open
                                      in the sun
                                the tide seeps out

   The path turns inland past fields covered in plastic to force an earlier crop. Back on the cliff, the way is bordered with green flowering alexanders, tamarisk hedges. Another seat, donated by the Perrranuthno Xmas Tree Fund. On a stretch of empty sand below the village a few dogs enjoy the last days before they are banned from the beach for the summer season.

                                 empty sea glitters
                                 in myriad points
                                 the wide horizon

   Hot chocolate in the beach tea-garden; the sound of lapping as the tide turns. The change also brings clouds. On the way back, shadows pass over the Mount and the sands of Mount’s Bay. Lady Susan’s seat now in a carpet of celandines. I count petals — they range from seven to thirteen. Sea creeps over the causeway. A chaffinch calls for a mate. Sloe buds are bursting, very late this year. I avoid the beach section and turn inland; plastic fields like pools cover potato plants, ripple in the wind. Up a walled lane beside a graveyard and back into Marazion in time for lunch. A short walk but enough to break in my new boots and shake off the winter sloth.
   A sudden urge to have my hair cut. But among the galleries, antique shops, cafes and fudge sellers, no sign of a hairdresser. Instead, I climb The Beacon. At the top, beside a cauliflower field, an iron grate on a pole is the site of a midsummer fire, once transmitted from hill to hill throughout Cornwall. Below, the last person wades along the causeway from St Michael’s Mount before the sea closes it until another tide.