Anne Ryland
Northumberland Morning
The sky is a lid made of lead,
the sea its shadow with a silver fringe.
The line on which they merge is level enough
for words to be written there in an infinite
sentence stretching around the country.
Against it, a tattered curtain of coast and twin castles.
Distant rollers blaze towards the opposite shore.
Here along Calot Shad the river has shrivelled,
its mudfl ats scattered with the last tide’s offerings:
a roof slate, a traffi cone
and what looks like half a bath tub.
The sea ploughs its own field —
those great brown ridges of bladderwrack,
billions of bubbles still unpopped.
Oystercatchers totter, coral bills tutting as they go.
Forty-two white islands are floating
until one mute swan raises its head, takes off in fl ight.
it runs on the water’s skin, wings
puffing-flapping, then lands suddenly
in a fl uster of feathers.
On Meadow Haven beach the sand is lines
of writing paper, a little wobbly as if in a dream,
knotted with lugworm coils, veined by oarweed
with its rope stalks and tangled fronds.
Seagulls are flying backwards in the wind
while the yellow helicopter drones overhead.
A wire fence laces the cliff
even though every day people fall off
the edge of their lives.
The not-quite-black cap of a seal
grows out of a wave,
the elongated muzzle and thick neck of a bull
with eyes that listen and speak.
An arch of back as he dives down to the bed
where even sun and moon cannot reach.
Page(s) 28-29
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