March

Wind on the bay,
force six and rising,
beating the narrows
where the island slopes
to cliff-edge margins:
bare rock over water
as deep as sky,
as grey as the gale.

Spring,
is barely awake
with its memory of trouble
fresh beneath the surface,
and the sea,
in weals and hollows,
howls winter’s last breath,
stirs the resentful waves to break
on jagged shores.

White horses in the bay
lash against buoys
where boats once were,
where yachts and dinghies
rode the unending summer days
when nights were slim and fleeting
and the stars barely shone
even at midnight.

Wind on the bay
reminds the flood tide
that the shape of weather
comes from another place,
riding the cloud palaces in gusts
to crown the land with lunging squalls;
sharp against coves and inlets,
storm surges stonewall the beaches
and the abraded grit of shingle beds
wears down to sediment and sand,
seabed stone for all the kingdoms
still to come.

© BH, 2021

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Time to do some months, I thought. Well, you sometimes need a starting point. I'd a few gaps not covered by the usual seasonal suspects. This came out of an image of weather in the bay near our cottage. I'd been trying for a Masefield 'Cargoes' vibe but that evaporated. The drying effect of West Coast winds, I expect. I was March when I wrote it.

The image combines the sea at Ardnamurchan point with a fountain at Indiana University. Eclectic and well-travelled, huh?