0031 Autumn's Wild, Rough Days Poem by Michael Shepherd

These wild, rough autumn days
as cooling Northern hemisphere
shudders towards its equinox
with gales and rain and blown-off leaves,
all the elements stirred up, and
bringing strange emotions;
everything is between;

but for children living by the sea,
days of joy and awe –
the sea, no longer blue
but savage brown-red, even emerald green,
which all the year
has bashed and nibbled at the cliffs
like kitchen-boy at pantried half-cut cake,
throws all its might as if it hated the whole idea of earth;
knowing that in one night,
it may do mighty things once in a while
that change the maps themselves – blocking estuaries
that have served ports for a thousand years,
with shingle banks; throwing new beaches
across bays, with stones so exquisitely graded
from rock to pebble, that it’s said,
night fishermen thrown onto such a beach without the moon
know exactly where they are by size of stone…

but for the child, a magic time:
the air’s a gift for lungs, like breathed champagne;
the sea after the gale is calming down;
but the beach is new: new toys thrown up,
seaweed of many shapes, still wild when wet,
along a new high tide line; stuff off ships, carved wood,
deck-mats, green globes that buoyed up nets,
boxes with some foreign words
to remind us that this same neighbour sea
has other foreign shores across the world..

and every stone and pebble, which yesterday
had muted, dusty-coloured, matt-textured anonymity,
now, wet with salty water, are translucent, shining jewels each one,
glass, white marble (and how far has that pebble come,
hassled and scoured across the ocean’s floor..) ,
rough granite of so many shades, hard serpentine,
purple, green, some striped; slate-blues, brick-reds, all
fit for a palace; gathered in an eager hand
which sees nothing in the world but gifts and miracles;
this lovely, wild, wild-hearted shore.