Penultimate pieces from the project:

Walking Upstream

Look to your right as we pass

Notice the tidal wash on the grass -

The dried remains of last week’s high tide

Now exposed to sun and wind.

A twig brought down in a recent gale

From far upstream, beyond the wave’s ride,

Wind-blown blossom lost its vibrant colour,

All now golden brown,

Soon to be absorbed into the ground

Gone until the next high tide.

 

Look to your right as we pass by.

Notice the tree roots high and dry,

Twisted into poetic shapes unsculpted,

Raw, not meant to see the light.

A roosting place for a nesting wren

Taking a chance on the vagaries of the tide.

A climbing frame for an eager toddler

Learning to be brave.

Pity now the tree roots left naked and bare,

Waiting, waiting for the next high tide. 

Kathleen Curtiss

Hunting

A path of moonlight flows to the sea

black like soft pillows bordering

Two dots of light dance

like fireflies in the dark

stopping to focus on sand below

a curse as metal strikes metal

torches dropped in the sand

the treasure is not worms tonight.

 

Lindsay Mulholland

Old Weather Tales

On Wyre river bank,

ancient weinds pave down to water’s edge,

A crooked ash is tipped by breeze,

to trail her pink bud fingers

through mountain gathered flow.

She rises late this spring,

her oak companion, already in full show.

Old weather tales predict Summer

fragrant  as the sweet wild rose

diffused in solar haze.







 

The farmer’s child interprets portents.

“Ash in leaf before the oak predicts an earth bound soak.

Yet oak so green before the ash, will only bring a splash.”

I see the hawthorn,

buxom with a bloom like fallen snow.

Another sooth I know.

Abundant blossom brings a russet

Autumn store

for bird life.

Old weather tales foretell

that childhood seasons find reprise.

Summer dry but Winter freeze. 

Adele V Robinson



 

Silt and Roses

Less than a lifetime ago

where Wyre and Irish Sea commingled,

waves washed right up to the esplanade

splashing those who strode atop

with surprises of spray. 

The brief passage of time

has wrought a subtle coastal change;

and now a strand of silt and shingle

on which wild roses grow

interposes between the promenader

and Fleetwood’s estuarine flow.

Steve Rowland