Lundy Island poems
Day 5 - 10: the poems written while away. Quite a mixture of styles.
Landing on Lundy
Too choppy in these easterlies
To land a boat, the 'copter drops
Taking our stomachs,
To rise again,
Bumping us down in a wind-blasted field.
Wind-tossed, wind-blown along the way,
A barrage of gutsy gusts bombards our ears,
Lifting firm-planted walking sticks into the air.
We battle to the refuge of our castle home
Accompanied by the humming,
The droning drumming,
Of the wind's wild jazz beat.
Early Morning Cliff Walk
The sunlight on the sea
Paints the cliffs into silhouette,
The margin between black and gold
Enough to dazzle, to blind.
Skylark trills fill the blue;
A marvellous chorus of pips,
Caws, cronks, and honks,
Fights the sussuration of the wind.
Razorbills bob on the waves in a line,
A feathered trawler net, gathering,
Diving together, surfacing together,
Feeding, trawling towards shore.
Puffins fly past granite rocks
On their way to grassy burrows,
A peregrine shows its pink chest
As it wheels past the cliff edge.
We stand in the cold nor'easterly
The early sun warming our faces,
Poised between cliff and moor,
Between this world and the next.
Above Milcombe House
Bench seated
Bird greeted
I float in a throng of song.
Gnarly branch arched
Casting the sun
Parched patterns on the path.
White crests fleck
The misted distance
To Devon's ghostly coast.
Waiting
A rock chosen,
I sit, still and silent,
Waiting for sounds
To reach my ears.
The bleating of ewes,
Piping skylarks,
Crying gulls,
A child's distant laughter,
The pip pip of a meadow pipit,
The buzz, silence, buzz of a bumble bee,
The ever present wind.
Private Spots
As knees stiffen and vertigo hits
I'm on the lookout for a place to sit
A rock will do, or else a stile,
Somewhere to rest my knees a while.
On longer walks a place to squat
Must be found. It needn't be discreet, not
Surrounded by cliffs, or clumps of gorse:
These days I'm less fussy, don't stray off course.
If no-one is coming, and there's no ants,
Quick as a flasher, I'll drop my pants.
My stay may be long, or may be brief
But oh my goodness, it brings relief!
Haiku Above Quarry Beach
At the quarry pond
The robin's song greets the day,
Orfe surface slowly.
Herring gulls bicker
Above the sea's relentless swell.
Peace finds me here.
© Copyright 2025. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved
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