Tides

Those watch-free zones
The coastal towns
Collections of people:
All ages who,
Glancing at the sea,
Or the cool inland breeze, or
The shadow on a summer’s day
Unerringly
Know the time

It’s early morning
Long shadows retreating
And wide busy crab-lands
The mud-flat home where
Lugworms, destined for
An angler’s hook, abide.
Seagulls black, and dawn pink,
Patrol like constables on a beat
Jabbing at the weaker shells

Or the evening low-tide
And children and trouser-rolled
Fathers and mothers
Grandparents, aunts,
The well and the unwell
Melded into one lump of joy:
Soft cool mud
Squelching between
Willing toes

And in the storms
The lashings at hightide
Seaweed cast up to the wind
And the same seagulls
Driven to a standstill
Eye-watering thundering
Gales ripping
At the tops of the waves
White horses galloping

And, all the while
The locals know the time
The harbour disgorging its hunters
On the tide
And gathering its children
Weighed down with catch
Escorted by
Inexhaustible seagulls and
Lamps swinging in the dusk

It’s a watch-free zone
The sloshing of an
Untethered will
Eruptions of romance
The collapse of wealth
Erosion of a coastline
And baptisms of
Overwhelming joy
The divine order of things

You and I

We’re all coastland people
You and I
We know the signs, the time
Sudden tide-turning breezes
Heralding a peristalsis
Of irreversible change
Storm time has caught us
Once again, we are unmoored
Blown by a fierce wild wind