Start Point: Geology Poem by Tony Jolley

This middle-aged Man o’ the Bay
Wasn’t so much Starting out
As already sailing, full-steam for France,
Arms spread wide in greeting
From Start Point to Stoke Fleming;
Solid shoulder cliffs
Leaning lovingly into their future
With such tender intent;
Headland eyes scanning horizon for sign
Of that long-awaited, approaching coastline.

My ancient orogeny was Hercynian:
A gently-dramatic, moving magma of feelings
Molten from man-mantle to core,
Which set solid our state
For all human history,
All geological time:
Her life metamorphosed
Beautifully, inextricably, into mine.

But the erosive agents of teenage time and tide
Wore down and weathered our ground
And an unintentional, unforeseen Atlantic
Seeped, then suddenly surged,
To form a formidable blue barrier between us:
A featureless,
Future-less
‘Gulf-of-less’.

Yet, at the continental end of our syncline
Your bedrock remained the same as mine:
Joined below the surface of life and living,
Deeper than the depths of all other loving.