Richard Williams
Springwatch 2029
If CCTV cameras still worked, still ran their twenty-four-seven-three-six-five loop,
then it would end like this. A breeding cliff of guillemots on the high Guildhall walls.
Fulmars nesting in a roofless ruin of pubs. A cormorant drying wings on the balcony
of the Theatre Royal as the tide licks what remains of the Walkabout Bar. A beach of
glass stars, ground down rubble and shipwrecked steel. Girders the ribs of near-
skyscrapers. Corralled at the storm line on Winston Churchill Avenue, a twisted pile
of cars, waiting in turn. A church near-obliterated by the shock of it all, roof tiles
scattered as confetti. Thrift greens the gaps between pews, pink flowers carpeting
the nave. Further out, salt water rules. The Solent flows around museums, swallowing
debris. Foundations split open, currents pull history into the sea. As tower block
stacks collapse, windows guillotine reflections, slicing the past. What’s left of the
harbour station, a reef of brick and metal, train tracks ending in mid-air. Above
churned-up surf, gulls roller-coaster a spiral of wind. But underneath is calm. Go
deep enough and underneath is always calm. The soundless feeding of a slowly
dancing shoal. A silver slivered slick-stream of eels. The swaying ballet of seaweed.
Endlessly shifting
the margins of existence
a mud-spit of life
Page(s) 51
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