An atmospheric description of the East Neuk of Fife from Poetry Share (£4), a publication featuring the work of “like-minded people” who met at StAnza, the spring poetry festival in St Andrews.

Celia Hawkesworth, one of eight poets represented, is an academic concerned with Yugoslavia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. After five years in Fife she has now returned to Oxfordshire.

SEA CHANGES

There’s a theatre at the end of the garden

where pale houses confront the sea

narrow wynds tangle up from the shore line

and homes nestle into the slopes.

Constructed from fear and defiance,

they face into the battering storms

as boats scurry back to the harbour

to the refuge of its high stone walls.

~

When the wind takes over the world

drowns out the sound of the waves

battles with roots for control of the trees

affronts every being with its violence,

sometimes, bent double, clinging to rails,

we are lured out by the drama

by the thundering waves

hurled high over sea walls and walkways.

~

When the air stills, sound returns

with sudden gifts of comedy

as gulls complain down the chimneys

or chuckle to themselves on the rooftops

and eider-drakes whirl like small engines

sandpipers skim by as on wheels

herons stand at attention

and crabs scuttle through drifts of weed.

~

Other times, when the water lies solid,

a limitless spill of blue paint

its stillness spreads up the steep lanes

settling in pools and seeping

in through the windows and doors.

Like meditation it slows

our breath and our footsteps

and draws us out into the light.