Coast Walk

The disaster in the air

you spoke of, it is in the way

this bank of cloud breaches land

over shirty, jostling waves.

It is in the way the seasons

draw in and crowd,

will herd us around

the last few scraps of warmth.

 

Two grey kingdoms blur to a smudge

of a world at the edge of a third.

It is in this strip of sand – mountain

worn to damp grain, encountered

near a vanishing.

Stalking for fish and chips,

a difficult time weighs

this idea disaster. I’ve felt it too, for years.

 

This dance, terminating – dis-,

a master,

attenuating light.

It’s glimpsed again

through a narrow street –

in the steely advance of legion waves.

It sounds in confused babble

of TV News, a shop bell’s ring.

 

It’s the secret of this roadside pigeon’s

unlocked guts. Waves again – ghosted in a car door.

It’s in the approach of sea brink; the lane’s funnelled, out-

   of-season chill.

It’s in these first few stammers of rain, the open shoreline’s

gathered junk, the rise and fall again –

fall again. It’s in the drilled reach up the beach to my feet.

With many more,

it’s coming and it’s in the air, the sky.

 

It’s in the sun and the fall apart of cliffs.

It harries at the lighthouse, in the dissolve

of ice-field drifts; wind-thrown gulls; scattered leaves.

It’s in the whisper at my shoulder –

familiar friend: ‘I’m on the next

bend, hurry – live.’

© Nathan Hamilton 2006