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Seven poems from Norfolk
1. Winter coots at Horning
Each visit there are more. Black backs
pulled furious through thrashed water by white
beak patch, aided by propeller legs, they rush
to the first fall of seed from the hand.
Where do they come from? Surely this
crowd was not in view a moment ago?
The shadows hid them, black on black,
under the bank, beneath the boats, deep
in their secret world of reeds. Feathered
energies drive them, strumming V-chords across
the surface of the river to join the feast.
The water is transformed. No longer placidly
strolling past, it churns and turns with
and under the birds, splashing and foaming
as they dance, dive and perform for the visitor.
Silence shouldered aside, the ear becomes
nervous, certain that retribution must
wait on the raising of this multi-threaded mob,
joyful, clatter-clack, beak and feet, wing and
feather, all joining to raise a moment's merriness.
And when the seed is gone, they drift away,
quieter and more reflective than they came.
The river mirrors out and the gaze is drawn
up and away and round the bend. Darkened
summer cabins line the bank and wind-clattered
lines on bare masts define a new silence.
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2. The bridge at Potter Heigham
Not much of a bridge, this,
humped over a cold river,
flat, black, empty and boatless. One pump
of the foot and it's past,
shadowed in the rear view mirror.
Empty in a winter-deserted town,
it traps no boats beneath a too small
arch as it saucily does so often
in season. Simple, plain, keeping
road and river far enough apart.
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3. Mouth of the Thurne
In the lee of the mill a quiet
resting place allows review
of the chill expanse of boatless river.
Sheltered so from the wind
it's easier to feel an intimate kinship
with the line of close-moored summer craft
huddling blue-tarped against the cold.
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4. St Benet's
The arched window, paneless,
still stands, though the abbey
has gone, reused to build
a windmill placed nonchalant
in the remains. That, too, is derelict,
ruined by a few years' disuse
and the rewards of shoddy building
rather than by the fury of a rampant
Henry. Still, it is where an
abbey was, quiet, alone,
smiling on fields and river,
on clerics and the lay.
The stones and bricks stay lonely
now, of little intrinsic worth.
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5. The staithe at Hickling
This wind began in Siberia,
tore holes in snow hills on the tundra,
danced with ice crystals in the breath of wolves,
swept over the central plains, nation after nation,
crossed rivers, traversed three seas,
impressed winter in its path,
to end here, rattling the lines
on flag-staffs and on masts, sky-lost
and weary, billowing the dark
tarpaulins of laid-up boats cradled
one to the other against the coming of spring.
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6. Winter on Horsey Mere
Standing row on row, water-slapped,
members of the chorus of dry-stalked reeds
wear individually crafted ice-anklets.
Visible now between them, deserted nesting mounds,
black-backed like the coots they bore,
decked with frozen lacy skullcaps.
Even the bittern is silent.
These small details are easier to explain
than the broad lake under its steely sky.
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7. Orchard at Horning
One apple remains,
gallowed by the orange crust
of its own sweet decay
to a single high stem
among branches sable-rubbed
against a snow-grained sky.
Somerset 1997 and 1998
Published in Sunshine Street Sketches May 1998 edition
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