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




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peace of mind

Day 15:  Your challenge is to write a six-line poem that has these qualities: informed by repetition, simple language, and expressing  enthusiasm . It should have a sermon/prayer-like quality, and then end with a bang.  The world is full of violence The world is full of greed  There's people out for power There's people in great need.  The answer's very simple - no matter what your views Just stop. Just stop, watching the news!  © Copyright 2025. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved
Read more

Party Piece

I haven't written any poems for quite a while,  resting after the intensity of the OU course in Creative Writing, and this year's Napowrimo which seemed to have sucked me dry.  But this morning a painting of Acker Bilk by my friend Jocelyn Gilfoyle prompted a memory of my Dad, which needed to be recorded.  He had a great love of instrumental music especially brass bands, which were unappealing to me as a child - after the first few tracks I'd usually had enough.  But I loved the novelty of him coaxing music out of his cornet, just by pursing his lips and blowing,  It only came out at Christmas, The scuffed black case with its puffy silk lining, The tarnished brass cornet nestled safe inside. Each year his girls would ask him to play His party piece at the family gathering, Amazed that his puckered lips could draw  Sweet notes from this unassuming instrument. He'd always start with an apology for being rusty, But once the first few wavering notes were tested...
Read more

Darkness

I'm beginning to question everything I write! The latest dictat is 'Show,  don't tell.'  Put enough detail in to make it vivid, but leave out details you don't need.  How much is enough? How much, too much? Our assignment is to write about a location, and place a character there, who may know the place well, or not at all. So here's one about a scary evening walk when I was on holiday with my Scottish relatives when I was a child.  I've never liked walking in the dark,  even as an adult.  The darkness between the Scots pines bleeds   onto the needle covered path,      monochromed by moonlight.  "Let's take a left then right,      left then right,       see where it takes us."  My uncle and older sister are in on the joke,    are fearless in the absence of daylight.        I follow them, gullible, trusting. A long way from home, we'd made our way    from the s...
Read more