Brean Down
By marandina
- 1554 reads
Audio version at: https://soundcloud.com/user-62051685/brean-down(link is external)
Brean Down
Gulls suspended in silence - mid-flight,
gliding high over spume-dashed rocks,
limestone cliffs reach out to horizons,
striations etched in millennial layers.
Kites dance on string, spring breezes,
labradors bound across pale, soft sand,
sea-tides ebb and flow in conjunction
with ephemeral, phased moon-cloud.
I climb steep steps of gnarled wood
that straddle, traverse oceans of time,
listening to the cry of coastal curlews,
corvine echoes of inky-black crows.
Gravel paths weave past scrub and bush,
a rambling, circular route to headland,
labyrinthine concrete buildings where
tin-hatted sentries roam as war-ghosts.
Diaphanous mist by brackish waters,
distant islands - steep and flat holm,
one a sanctuary to save avian souls
the other, gateway to ancient lands.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/somerset/brean-down/brean-down-coastal-walk(link is external)
Pic is my own
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Comments
Really enjoyed the cliff
Really enjoyed the cliff ramble as have had so many holidays on Purbeck cliffs and Pembrokeshire coastal path, and also lived many years in Barry with the friendly Flat Holm and Steep Holm to see (except when it was raining, though the saying was that if you could see them it would rain soon!).
Cliffs like that do show time passing, though recent research does show they were probably put down in violent storm over fairlly short time as happened after Mt St Helen eruption, and gradual engulfing of fossils unlikely. Rhiannon
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Rocks and resonates with
Rocks and resonates with autheticity.
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What a great illustration in
What a great illustration in words Paul.
I liked that third stanza:-
I climb steep steps of gnarled wood
that straddle, traverse oceans of time,
listening to the cry of coastal curlews,
corvine echoes of inky-black crows.
But the poem as a whole is so dreamy and reminds me of the wildness that I would love to visit.
A beautifully captured poem indeed.
Jenny.
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I don't know that part of the
I don't know that part of the country at all- thank you for taking me with you marandina!
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Enjoyed reading this,
Enjoyed reading this, Marandina. You capture the ruggardness of the landscape, rich with myth and legend.
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Very lovely. :)
Very lovely. :)
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Even living by the sea,
Even living by the sea, reading your lovely poem I got that tingle of holiday magic :0)
I loved the contrast of high stillness and adjacent movement in
"Gulls suspended in silence - mid-flight,
gliding high over spume-dashed rocks"
and just the sounds in this
"Kites dance on string, spring breezes,
labradors bound across pale, soft sand"
but also the way there is movement all through, with the cliffs dissolving, tides coming and going, history constantly being made and left behind like the steps climbed. It is a beautiful companion poem to St Audrey's Waterfall.
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