The River Fowey

she rolls moorland to sea
in bubbles and reeds head
over heels in unbroken
prose over stones under
fingers of oak and arms
of birch. the bend belongs
to three cormorants blue-
black, silver-still. she brings
a body of nests screaming
gulls the questing head
of a single seal yet only
she shadows the salmon
belly bent
empty

to the sea
to Fowey
to Finisterre

The Beast of Bodmin Moor

You don’t see me
now in the undergrowth
your best dark secret
I’m your best dark secret
shadow cat you thought
You saw your dark secret
You can’t hold and no-one
Touches this dark secret

I never leave this place
You can keep your dark secret
I crawl pounce flash
Black this dark, feline secret

Feel my paws the memory of a claw
Scratching at your dark secret
How much darkness
How many secrets
So many stories

Find me and I’ll lie down
Dark, secretive. Yours.

Flight Path

His first time in the glider

                                           tiny flecked rocks 
                                           an enormous dark blue dark outpouring of sea.

This was real emotion
rolled up in a bolt of white air
thermal, engulfed by a staggering singular force.

It bears him in a muscular, thundering embrace,
compresses his breath,
this was sex , fury, joy.

A drop of pressure and up swung a vertebra of cliff,
snatches of field through a torn cloud,
water, land, sky, sloped.

That gull disturbed from its nest

                                                                      imagine!
                                                                      The world tipped upside down.

His hand on the lever, that freedom to fall,
to return again over Cornwall
earth and heaven.

Peter Lanyon was born in St Ives in 1918. He was a full-time artist and part time glider. This poem is inspired by one of his gliding paintings. ‘Thermal’.

Waiting

I am half a mile out to sea, waiting.
The sea is shallow flat, less than a foot deep,
the red sun casually lowering.

A set arrives over the reef, breaking,
her salty lips fold over like a sheet.
The head-high barrel wave is waiting

for me to air-drop into standing.
I see rainbow seaweed underneath,
through the tunnel, the is sun lowering.

I feel the compression of the wave collapsing,
through the almond-shaped space my eye meets
a blue fin tuna skipping, as if waiting

for me. Like a bullet I am catapulting,
behind me salt crystallising to gunpowder sleet
out of the barrel, like shrapnel spray following, lowering

the wave fires me out, and I am surfing.

My hair and I

From Irish roots and freckled pale
cheeks with uniform plaits and pink
blousy bows and over-rigorous one
hundred brushes and winks at prayer
time in named navy blue knickers
incase I should get lost and stolen
kisses down Frog Lane with Garry
Webb and endless sleepy summers sat
on warm pavements the cuckoo long
gone and stand up washes in the
kitchen sink before tea and school
sports days spent at home baking
whilst mum is out cleaning toilets and
dad is in bed to scratchy striped
cheese cloth and flares and loose and
long and flowing wild at heart cautious
by nature splendidly singular walks in
chalk valleys with Keats to guide me in
love to Leonard Cohen soundtrack in
Jonny’s oversized shirt wet from the
musky damp earthen floor of the bothy
to jaunty bob and Mothercare and
buckets of soiled towelling nappies left
to soak overnight to radioactive fallout
and regeneration and acceptance of
loss and childless rounded belly and
wispy violet tints and tender bare spots

Quagmire

This path has become a quagmire.
It’s like trudging through trenches.
Either side, brown bracken lies
dying or dead like rotting bodies.

I pass through fields
where bales have been bound.
The farmer gathered the hay
tied them and left them to rot
when the rains came.

There must hundreds
grouped in pairs in field after field.
I continue on past each sorrowful
couple following the mire.
A warning I do not heed.

I pause on a bridge listening
to the sound of the stream
as the water, pure and free,
cascades down the rocks
from the source high in the hills
into the sea where it will be lost
like me and my thoughts
diluted in the salty waves and swirl.

The Lesson

He pulled the legs off the robot
then asked me to fix it, upset
that it could no longer dance.

The legs dangled from wires
swinging back and forth
as he held it in his arms.

It beeped and played music
turning its head as he pressed
the buttons on the controller.

Its eyes flashed full of life
but it wouldn’t dance and he
liked it when it danced as he

joined in bending at the knees
swaying his hips in time flailing
his arms like squatting moths.

I’ll try super glue but I don’t know
if I can fix it. It’ll be a lesson learned
like when I spent hours building

a model aeroplane and pinned it
to the ceiling only for it to fall
and shatter into pieces and it was

my mother who swept them up,
put them in the bin then wrapped
her arms around me as I wept.

The Dandy of Crows

They tell me I’m theirs
But I am mine.
Forced out of my home,
On crests remain.

Extinct in the west,
Now I’ve returned,
To rugged coast headland,
Freedom to roam.

They view me by thrift,
They name me by call.
I am the Chough,
Kernow I’m home.

As black as jet rock.
High heels I strut.
Alizarin lippy,
The dandy of crows.

Gannel Elver Eels

The Elver moon hangs low.
A sliver of glass
That casts no light.

The flooding tide
Creeps in invisible,
Carrying an army
of Sargasso ghosts.

Journey’s end is in sight,
Or not,
For the lake is green soup.
Still, they know the way.

Restless coots bicker,
Breaking peace of quiet night,
Unaware of the travellers
Pitching up below.

When the time comes,
Many moons from now,
Back to the sea they’ll go.

Sennen

A touch of cobalt
Atlantic chill
Shore wracked kelp
Clear sea glass.

Sun bleached shell
Bracken unfurl
Sheer cliff
Rolling swell
Death dive gannets.

Granite boulder wall
Lichen covered
Horses toiled here
Land worked hard.

This is Cornwall,
End of the earth.

Coming Home Trees

Driving the A30 black river
Back from up country.
In blinkless gaze
Where miles slip by nebulously.

Predictable rain
Yet to appear.
Just give it time,
The west’s green fields
Come at a price.

Then over the peak we spot them.
Under Toy Story sky,
Mirrored by field clouds
That graze sunlit hills.

Our sentinels stand
Together to welcome,
And give us
Warmth in our hearts,
For we know where we are.

Give us a bow
As we pass,
Steadfast old friends.
Right side of the Tamar,
Now we are home.

Kennack Sands, 1956

I’m old now so it’s odd to discover how this salt-sticky evening still knows me, remembers my young body from that blue and gold morning when I paddled in the sand-stirring shallows, the undertow sucking at my pink jelly shoes, pulling me down like a dream or a spell. The Old Man of the Sea played this little–piggy with my toes and foam-feather-tickled my ankles; then he grabbed at my leg with his sand-gritty fingers, weed-whipped my belly and chubby, pink thighs. But I was a mermaid with pearls in my hair so I waded out deeper and deeper. Saw the starfish glinting in the blue sea-sky and the sea-trees waving in the wind. Dream-deep in the ocean, I never minded for a minute that you had left your blanket and come running, running to save me. Lifting up your skirts, you came splashing through the shallows, squealing, squawking and spoiling. I had fixed my eyes on the faraway silver, stubbornly pretending not to hear. It did no good. You cut through air like a black-back after fish-bits, you swooped, gulped me down in one pelican swallow. À bientôt, Old Man of the Sea.

If anyone asks

The bonnet of the Daimler is green like the leaves on Nana’s apple tree, shiny like the sweat on his pink, greasy face and under his sparse, sandy hair. The posh Daimler pitches and rolls like the ferry between Gravesend and Tilbury. The sloppiness of it is making her feel queasy but she swallows the sick to keep it down. The sun on the windscreen is just pretending to be warm. It’s February, not even proper spring. The car smells of his aftershave, leather and wood. He tells her the dashboard is walnut. She eats walnuts at Christmas time. The bits get stuck in her teeth. His aftershave is not spicy, not like her dad’s, but stickily sweet like the tiny lace-edged hankies Nana keeps in her drawer for Sunday best. Nana used to go to church on Sundays. She doesn’t any more. His fingers on the wheel are pudgy and soft. Thick as a Walls pork sausage. For driving, he wears special gloves with leather insets. He has wet patches underneath his arms. When we get there, stay in the car. If anyone asks, you are my niece. It is Sunday afternoon. They are driving in the country. Here is a car park with a green lawn and  some trees. Don’t forget  what I said.  She watches him leave, squirms on the leather upholstery. He wears fawn trousers, a brown tweed jacket,  tan-coloured, leather, lace-up shoes. When he comes back, he is walking fast. It’s windy so his green tie is flapping. He is carrying two glasses, one in each hand. I’ve bought you a vodka and lime. 

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time

Listen! Like a creature snuffling and snoring, his breath
comes from deep inside the burrow
of his duvet he cannot be bothered to wash. Eyes fast shut
he has come unstuck, floating through the dark
like a blue balloon trailing his string. Going nowhere.

Mornings, sleepy Billy dawdle-dozes, blotting out the vast grey silence.
Now the clock has stopped, he’s uncertain which day has just dawned.
He stumbles out of bed past noon, breakfasts on cold pizza in crimson pyjamas.
A dozen beer bottles chink in the sink, more than he opened, he is sure.
Hey there, Billy. Isn’t this fun? Billy is always having a party.

Afternoons, Billy scratches his arse, binge watches a series on Netflix.
He checks in on Facebook, Twitter, Insta, and picks fights if he can.
Sometimes he thinks fondly of the ordinary job he thought he hated.
Imagines himself on a Saturday night, suited and booted on the town.
Say a prayer for poor Billy, alone with no one to turn to.

Evenings and nights are the worst.
Little Billy hears voices: You’re a waste
of space, they croon in his shell-like. A loser. Not right in the head.
Billy opens another bottle of beer.
He wishes he still had some uppers.