12th April 2021
A true Northerly, wind of Arctic dryness,
Steadily flecking the bay this April morning.
Sky cloudless, sun clearly strong
In this unindustrial air
Fresh from above the now-cracking pack ice,
Travelled here over Highland crags
All blizzarded Easter white.
All the same –
Wherever, whenever we bank this sharp wind’s lee,
There’s humming thrift and gorse, too, busying bees
As air made lazy slowly eddies,
Nectar sweet and so eiderdown warm,
We’re half expecting this year’s first lizard:
In one stride’s width of a hedge bank,
From Svalbard’s cold to southern France!
Now walking the pebbly cliff-foot tideline,
Scatters of chill and bake kaleidoscope about us:
An everytemperature harlequin teasing,
As if all the world’s lines of latitude
Were ravelled like spaghetti along this shore;
Thus each, for an only moment,
Can bewaft us with their wont of weather.
A beach turned strange, today…
Sand, everywhere, spread so high above its usual bedding –
And it walks soft, hollow, deep-yielding:
Stiff-moussed with air, it was, by last night’s surly surf.
As we wade out,
From underneath our every step
Come prilling up fristy bubbles by the flounceful
To petillate us coquettishly, no shame:
We could be naked glitterati,
Bathing like deities
In snow-cooled vintage champagne!
© Christopher Jessop 2021