Sunlight
on a pale green ocean Poems by Henry Marsh
1:
Atlantic Beach
On a quiet
day
though a mile away
you can hear the island
breathing, the suck
and sigh of waves.
And the
listening –
like holding your breath
to hear if your child
is asleep.
You imagine
the slow
emerald roll,
the spume held
for a moment in the breeze.
When I saw
her
running across
the sand-pale floor
I
remembered a child
of the sea, another
spirit of place,
conjured for a moment
between the arms
of a white bay.
And the
sun her red ball
on the horizon.
2:
Corncrake
I’ve waited years
for this
you devious
ventriloquist
you
wee magician.
I
thought
I saw your neck
and beak
stretch
skywards
in the rushes.
But your crek
has crept
to the other
side of the fence.
Here
now
there –
no sway
betrays
as you tunnel
through
spell-stopped
machair flowers.
Oh
I give up.
It seems
you’re half
a field away.
Crek-crrek –
like a piece
of old
machinery.
Then
skimming
over the rye –
the rusty wings.
The master
lifts and
drops
into invisibility.
3:
Spring in South Uist
Persephone,
this morning, your thoughts are coiling
like cloud in a winter gulley.
You see, beneath its
tattered, russet fleeces
the bedrock, grey
as weathered sheep bone.
Yesterday, I caught in
your eye, sunlight
on a pale green ocean
that shimmered in swathes of
delicate purple, where busy
sea-birds clamoured
at hints of imperial summer.
4:
Evening at Gearraidh Bhailteas
Grey skies
bestow
their own graces. In muted
light, purple vetch
and finger-rooted orchid
retire in modesty,
while buttercup and yellow
silverweed are bright,
alternative, emergent
stars. Above the miles
of white, deserted beach,
three gulls pass
in close formation, intent
on their patrol. They break right,
swooping and yammering
over grey rocks. A dozen
oystercatchers dibble
in the wash of the
tide. The grey
sea has a closer horizon
than the land. Its gentle arc
is held within the wide
arms
of the endless bay. To complete
an improbable perfection,
by the road across the machair,
in a hint of peat-reek
carried on the edge of the wind,
a man is mending a
tractor,
singing in Gaelic a song
whose melody follows the
contours
of the Uist
landscape
close as a limpid burn.
All the
poems come from the collection “A First
Sighting” by Henry Marsh (Maclean Dubois 2005),
and are used and reproduced
by kind permission of the author.
© Henry
Marsh 2005