S.D. HEATH

POEMS & POETICS

[sdheath]

Unremarkable

The seabed is always busy laying out each wave it breaks their backs pushing the tide upward only to fail

The strandline is the finishing line where galaxies of bubbles burst and bring an ancient calm blooming from our water genes

The wind, distracted, strokes the dunes shifting mountains in their sleep pixel by pixel, it rewrites the land, granularly The beach, the seaweedy shallows forget themselves; lost then found then lost

A mother seal's ribcage lies undone abraded by the driven sand displays its ligaments chewed to string and black with tar, her jaw left open to the freezing tide

You can trace the foam in pencil but not the giants that swim beneath You could sketch the bones in charcoal but you will never know how just they were broken

You walk this threshold not because it’s your home, but to be reminded of that which we are not allowed to keep We are not unwelcome only unremarked, unremarkable

[sdheath]

On a North Sea Shore

It’s the last drops of sun that catch fire – blood orange flowing between sea line and a fat roll of storm – incoming – loaded with hail. But the tide still turns slowly and lays the sea’s weeds in that slack water where mermaids leave their purses on the strand line; the tiny embryos left tightening in the drying wind.

Give the wind time, and it will scour the world clean

Farne and Longstone islands are silhouettes of U-boats forever surfacing amidst the North Sea swell. Their lights regard the rock-boiled water, scan the shallows and profounds; the drying rocks and reefs – Knivestone, Whirl, Glororum Shad - beaming their regret to the bones of ships after ship – lost amongst the kelp.

Give the sea time, and it will wash the world clean.

What the lighthouses have withstood in silence, the gulls rail against: the stabbing wind, their nostrils caulked with salt. Always above, they soon become just white noise, background arcs etched into grey skies.

But they still sing of that sorrow buried in us all so deep that no blade could ever cut it out.

[sdheath]

[sdheath]

[sdheath]

Star cuts

I open my wings and fall into the sky my sweet decision the stars rotate

chip-hard like minerals cool silver as if they would sharp as if they would wound

[sdheath]

“Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves to just floating, floating; caring not a whit for the pauperism staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call the floating world.”

[sdheath]

Wraiths

Unreal we haunt the floating world we missed the point and found our way into this place this wordless universe

[sdheath]

Not me, there

An old place the wielding of wind only I and the forest listen

[sdheath]

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Blackfoot saying

[sdheath]

Night rise

Words fall like blossom all around me I cannot look -- I cannot listen anymore it wasn't me that started it ------------------------------

When the evening sun is this deep and purple lines the clouds the night rises up quickly to snuff out everything we see

[sdheath]

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

James A. Baldwin

[sdheath]

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Alan Watts

[sdheath]

Unfathomable

“For every stone on Chesil beach there is a star in the Miky Way”

You placed a stone - as smooth as an egg from Chesil beach - down on my kitchen table. It was part of galaxies, and long-unconscious time - time so deep, we two could never fathom it. Not with our little minds.

[sdheath]

The Dark Light

That night they took the lighthouses down. And so, the surf sounded like eternity in the empty darkness - on the unlit rocks. The storm burst helped - lit purple and yellow like an old bruise - clouds brimming with lightning it kept grumbling out to sea - threatening the beach There is a road that will lead me home But there is a wave that will wash me out to sea

[sdheath]

Dunstanburgh Castle

They were growing cold - in the wind and the freezing rain It made them gasp - like a punch in the gut - wet clothes stuck to them - clinging, weighted. This walk to the ruins had started  in warm sunshine. Now they sat in silence on four-foot thick stone walls - on the cliff’s edge. The gulls floated up as if they were only a couple of feet off the ground - not the two-hundred feet up they really were. They were calm - close to their nests - looking at the wet humans with a careful look of understanding.

I swim and I drown in these memories of you - of us the castle is a forged memory - and like a ruined mouth - missing teeth and letting rot get in. The times we walked from the little fishing quay along the beach - in storms and sun - with the North Sea crashing and echoing in my head. These are to be the best times of my life - the ones I feel inside as the darkness comes back into sight

[sdheath]

The First Age of Dust

This could be the first age of dust - soft dancing in a shaft of sunlight - spiralling inside the tiny thermals of a school library long since emptied of its books

Moon dust and mars dust play their own games with our delicate machinery - curiosity and opportunity go slack and cold when dust storms obscure the globe

And my dust will be thrown into the sea on a windy day Perhaps blowing back into the mouths of my children And I won’t mind because I’ve looked at it all and understood Nothing

[sdheath]

A beautiful hare