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Elizabeth Barrett

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Endeavour, Resolution, Adventure, Discovery

We are staying by the whale bone arch
and Captain Cook’s cliff top memorial
with its dedication to these Whitby ships.
But all I can think about is the nicotine patch
on my back and of how I am endeavouring
not to break my resolution this time.

This land is too familiar for adventure,
disclosed already beyond discovery -
terrain mapped with sorry charts easing the way back,
logged with revelations of here they be dragons:
the way I will find myself wordless inside a tiny shell,
unable to feel - a spilled husk without look or touch.

On the second day I wake clean as a bell before dawn.
The fooling hunger gnaws, drives me out, out -past
the drowsing family, beyond the sleeping
pinks of sea-front facade, into the mizzle
and grey of cradled, cliff-held
town, down to the pier.

There is no end in sight but sound
of crook’d cobbles beneath my feet,
when suddenly the mist unrolls,
peels a shadow from salty air:
at my side a harbour light unveils swing of bucket,
yellow oilskin shining, slicked with rain.

Then me, stumbling to answer eyes travelling
the length of me, his gentling voice. I lean out over rails,
watch him hand over hand down rungs, taking his chance
while the tide’s out, plundering the harbour bed.
A finger of light breaks through cloud, dissolving in blue,
and I walk on with my discoveries:

dawn I witnessed; a fisherman; the chance encounter -
a presence, unexpected; these early pickings.

 

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