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.
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