GUERNSEY SNAPSHOT

It's interesting that, whilst Guernsey has a considerable number of self-proclaimed poets, few of them feature the island in their writing.
Should you, dear reader, choose to travel back through the 500 plus posts on this site or seek out copies of my poetry collections, Stone Witness or A Guernsey Double, you'll find that in my writing, at least, this beautiful island is not ignored.

  

AT LOW TIDE

On Bordeaux’s limpet-pimpled shore

a man hunts crabs among the rocks,

a woman in a summer dress

bends in her search for sea-glass gems.

Children, oblivious to cold,

with nets and voices like small birds,

flit back and forth and never stop.

With subtle choreography

gulls scrawl on sand their arrow signs: 

this way the sea, that way dry land.

Like toys abandoned, small boats rest

lopsided, tideless, dispossessed, 

while vraic in forty shades and more

shimmers, a legion laid to waste,

its burnished armour shiny still.

A hundred thousand living things

infest small crannies, clefts and pools 

while time, suspended, holds its breath.

All that lie sleeping, death denied,

await the resurrecting tide.