I’ve been asked to write
m i n d f u l l y
I just want to get to the river and swim
This short walk’s made so much longer
by all our stopping and noticing
I notice the weak Devon sun
struggling to be noticed
above the air extractor
proud in its noise
against all this bloody silence

Pine needles flirt with cobbles
like a bunch of girls from Margate
I flip flop as hard as I can
to break into the quiet

Where are the birds?
I realise I haven’t looked up before

Christ, how many joggers are there?
Thin white women with dreads
You can tell we’re somewhere posh

Hooray for the end of the car park
All these so-called environmentalists
with their neat rows of cars
showing off their green stickers
as if these make any difference

I walk by a hedgerow, a smile of sunflowers
heads down, slightly hungover
like me

A seed floats past my shorts
as if seeking to impregnate
the wrong species

Purple briars reach out their barbs
in mock welcome

Look, I’ve really tried
but now I just want to get in the fucking river

I think about pike
can’t help it; bloody Ted Hughes
gets everywhere

In the darkening, someone waves
a white hankie
surrendering to the night
I’m told this attracts the birds
represents the underside of a wing

Granite gives off a glow
giving up its power

I won’t say this out loud
into the moor
its many ears of bracken and heather
but position my head one way
the other – as if I’ve antennae

am reminded of a singer
who said she’d choose hearing
over sight – I thought she was wrong
Her sense triumphs

At the furthest edges of bracken
At the fclick-whirr
At the fa burbling
At the fa gentle electronica

Nightjars
pushed to the edge of the land
The moor pulses to a faint techno

Former mines glower against purple
All that’s left of the sun
at the join with the sea –
its hinge
its cold wing

On the strand – a thin bar of ground-
up granite – between St Agnes & Gugh

both islands, yet at low tide
they remain stubbornly umbilical

Wind nibbles at the bar but the tide’s feeble
I encourage it, draw a channel with my toe

9 or 10 paces to the other sea, wanting to coax
– not force – the sea into making full-on islands

A serpent of water snakes into the toe trail
before being drunk by some god beneath the sand

More snakes & worms inch along, they too are drained
but the sea’s inquisitive. I dig deeper with my heel

a red sliver of seaweed swims the new channel –
at speed. I dig again, this time with a pointy boulder

I can just about wield. A spume of sea, seductive
almost shy, feels its way, as if sightless. I’ve done nothing

like this since I was a child. I glee rises up as the seas
meet. I’ve made two proper islands. Their meeting’s casual –

no fizz or chemical reaction – just two siblings getting along
My enjoyment ebbs. Why had I felt the need to control?

Did I imagine I was some latter-day Canute?
The channel’s become a rivulet, a small stream of guilt

The sea now has a memory – having breached the sands
at low tide in only September. What will come

of a spring tide, or storm? The two houses of Gugh
stare at me; their gable ends a judgement

the leaves tussle
in on themselves,
as if hoping to return
to their tree –

the tree which rejected them
threw the branch down

the shaggy emerald mass
lay there, a queer bouquet
glossing
against the field’s dark corduroy

the leaves hate this brown jug
where I thought they’d be happy
I gave them plentiful water
they’re stood on a wooden shelf
with a window to consider

they refuse to look up or out
will break rather than unfurl
so much to admire
in their untameable knowledge
of the self