We’re in Aldeburgh in Suffolk. We are having an unfeasibly long winter, snow at the end of March. I went for a run in the painful cold. My body, my crow food carcass helped me write a poem when I got back. A couple of photos from the relative warmth of our apartment window follow.
Gulls and terns
take turns
to shriek and giggle
the sullen crows
watching, will he fall?
red in the grey of the storm
carrion, he’s carrion, meat
they whisper,
shadows gathered in the shingle pits
safe from the ice daggers
charging over the battered bluff
the empty head of a fish
already finished, rolling away.
Run, keep running
one side’s done, numb
turn around, let the sea
bite your other side
flaying symmetry.
Think, old Northmen
their dragon boats.
Today is safe, they’re
clustered in fjord harbours
but their howling ghosts
rail impotent
with the wind
barging at the closing door
© Poem and Photos. Mel Melis, March 23rd 2013
