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

from sunrise to sunset
    unbelievable moments
inside the compass not a cloud resides

against all odds this mid-winter crazy high
    bridging between Iceland and the Azores
        crystal cerulean days of rhapsodic sun
            lifts everything into astonishing beauty and brilliance

from jetstreams evaporations to the song thrushes’ tintinnabulations
this is extraordinary weather, an adoration almost for global warming!

& this exception is for a whole week
as time strikes 12 days before Xmas; this balm that
wakes hibernating tortoiseshells, perks the sleeping loft flies,
stalls a transit osprey, reels the curlew into daylight songs,
rakes the mawking cries of gulls, trains the mergansers’ ‘quaiks’
all because the little tributaries are receding on the falling tide
where sands ripple & the 4 rivers’ waters on tidal flats spangle
& still the dark centre the jets are sluicing through the ice airs
& today the motorcross bikes are growling over the soundstreams

catching up Alan on the beach with Meg
    he up-dates me with this morning’s forecast
        of us in resplendent glory whilst the rest of the Isles
            are cloaked in fog, we’ll mock complaint all the same!

around Ferryside the necklace of little trains:
the Swansea shuttle, the Manchester crawler & the Brighton sprint
become baubles around the Cefn Sidan spit,
their glinting track punctuated by two-tone horns

         earlier, the bowl of a scimitar moon nestled against the Gower
& inside Beach House I sunbathe in its low winter bower -
reading echoes that distract with histories’ Ilais, traws & trials:
of ancient pilgrim routes across low tide fords, the mussel pearl-fishers
of the 20’s & 30’s to re-enact, & Llansteffan’s trade links
of gathering salt-meat drovers for the Royal Navy at Portsmouth
(somehow the nose smells a link, unearthed & revealed just in ink)

& I’m blinded by this low gorgeous winter sun
so bright it illuminates the weave of this commercial
paper Onto which I write by hand & gel pen...