Never too late
to whistle out the boy
in you, the one who is going to be the death
of both parents,
a wind-sculpted cliff face;
clamber left then right
to sidestep an overhang in a quest
to get at the fossils.

The sea sloshes
among the rocks at the bottom.

The next thing to avoid
is vertigo, of late a visitor
to heights, so
it’s handy to relate
to the brave man
ventilating your name—and right now
at a stretch grips
a ledge—that the sedimentary layers
were, in the Jurassic, base
of the ocean

which puts quick
heartbeats into perspective
during the ascent
of rock that’s risen
to the point of an afternoon
in thrall to deep curiosity
which is no height at all.

It’s best to grip
this once-beneath-sea cliff,
hang on to the knowledge
that a phylum with a glimmer
in it of mammal swam there and ate,

and get giddy
with the wonder of it—the lengths
to which legs
would go to get immersed
in needs beyond the reach of H2O.

The cliff
has risen amidst a vast list
of extinctions, like the mass
of some palaeontological
gap the gulls curve
away from to continue their delicious
and still available
diet of fruits de mer.

What a strange wonder,
on this latest day of all creation,
to be human, scramble up
a cliff face to extract,
with a pick, a bunch of old stones

and look into it deeply for orientation.



Clear of the bay, a moored mob of yachts,
he busies himself with lures and lines,
gets the feel of the day; a mate, one or another,
is at the wheel. The boat thumps and shakes
as it grazes the swell. He smells petroleum—
is fuelled by anticipation, range, action,
till big fish, tuna, become an hallucination.
He might be feverish in the act of feeling so real
and, amid plummeting gannet, the lure of dramatics.
There, under a bright sky, in a quickening breeze,
he is caught in a dazzle though drawn at speed,
well clear of the continental shelf,
towards victory, relief. Or he’ll relish the tease.

Fisher two is stationary, with a heron’s patience,
edge of a lake, and if there’s no strain on the line,
nod of the rod towards promise, there’s meditation.
He waits, winds in the fly, casts and recasts
a gossamer arc. The lake is corrugation, then it is glass.
Or in his boat he stays put, anchored
as he might be at a bar, looking dreamily
to see what might happen, beyond his beer.
The trout is elusive, tactics and a Sunday
gambled might win it. The man’s moves
are sudden, spiderish. He’ll use
many old tricks till, by nightfall, he too
may be spent. Elsewhere, women later might surface.


Picture this: a fishing boat, days out
on the ocean, makes an entrance, small
and free of sway, amid a suddenness of settlement.
What the harbour absorbs, routinely,
happens without fanfare. The sea
nuzzles a fleet, like animals asleep.
There is expectation and, always, a rapid passage
into marvellous harbours
as well as a vantage to photograph
the panorama, a diversion, under a clear sky,
from the good anchorage. In a mist, history
will report defences, batteries, forts
for the sake of prized interior water.
When the boats are captive, now
and foreseeably, the wind’s storm-force.
Then the harbour discreetly
suffers its crazy creases, while the ocean,
madder, is tearing its clothes to pieces.
The harbour, you name it, each one
concentrated: Valletta (top of the list
for conflict), St John’s, Halifax, Hobart...
There it’s always the limit, in high wind,
to upset a menu, à la carte,
and the general composure,
off the coast, of a luxury liner.
Everything needed right then to be
on its best behaviour: famished gulls,
buskers, drunks, a well-pressed
sheeny water. Better, as most do, more cheaply,
to arrive by air! Better get a grip...
For this ship, wealthy foreigner,
there will be fanfare and possibly on deck
a band under shelter, and the mayor looking sunny.
It’s best, if fish stocks are wrecked,
to fish tourists for money—only the panorama,
when it’s visible, is sure to be without charge.
That’s marvellous! And the streets like cordage
wrapped firmly around water and motion,
town driven by wind and the boats on petroleum—
the harbourmouth, wide or a devil,
to the wide world always open, spotted first
at sea quest and cannon level,
beating hollow the casual, elevated
pleasure of seeing all that has followed.

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