The sea looks calm, though seas are never calm,

in and high, oil-slicked with breeze and mackerel. Then

breaks of froth and spit on surfacing rocks

which fin and iceberg the thickness are gull-swarmed

like Tippi Hedron.

                          Brief hot agonies

of ligament and flint uphill, through high-thorned paths

which hide the cliffs and sea, and into gnat clouds,

suggest landlocked farmland. Bloodsuckers harry

the luxury of sun-scald arms thinner than hide.

Corn buntings click out strangeness, swallows whip,

a buzzard hangs and drifts on rolling updrafts

from the rolling sheep hillocks.

                                                The pathway narrows,

marine and sea-rot odours dissipate, docks

danken. The bracken is fresh or toasted. Thistles

stretch over tough-nut sea carrot, red clovers,

and campion. He sees bell heather nodules and a solitary

cornflower. Pale-pink blossoms freckle, the bramble

is salt cured.

                   Sudden piggeries of fertilized field

are blown aside by seascape, by the open wind’s

savour and in soothes of shirt-flapping. The sun’s bake

is silvered cool, freshening like armpit droplets,

while breakers stay hushed as distant motorway.

Sandy erosions underneath a cliff house

(uninsurable to be sure) look red raw,

the latest and freshest bites in the gigantic predator’s

long kill.

            He stops, hellos a passer-by,

tastes a mellow pipe-tobacco musk in the coat-wake,

then tastes the sea. Two wetsuits front crawl

in synch parallel to the coast, so far from shore

he assumes they’re both pros. The sea glares

a moment then softens to unfocused glassware shim

as voices come from somewhere, private chats,

cries ventriloquized from somewhere, difficult to place,

disjoined from place, from flues or ducts in offices

or hotel rooms, the back-entry amplified clatter

of terraced houses, the nearby no-one voice

that taunts the space in between tower blocks,

‘Arse in gear,’ ‘Pint soon,’ ‘Fuckssake Magsie,

Mags, come on, one…two’ as far down

along the vertical line, further on the hypotenuse,

but much nearer horizontally, a team of rowers

hauls an eight, their pulls and voices crisper,

more here than distance, yet distant still,

sudden ear-perk sounds which drop

in breeze bafflement then flinch heads, bespeaking

approach, bespeaking Lindisfarne and running, overheard

at Salamis, and across the strait at Actium, as they cut

and heave, furrowing towards the inlet below.