Lawrence Upton

gangway #36 – Home & Homecoming

4 poems

© 2005 by Lawrence Upton and gangan.com

 

touch


turn upon turn not getting there

ornamental lines over rectangles

lines broader than rivers’ flowing
through streams they’ve cut, bleeding in soil

lines harder and more impermeable
than paths and tracks
                               sharing a variety
of straightness; while lands mark up, or
dash about; somehow propelled,
impelled by misapprehensions

nature is ambulatory

I touch therefore I live

 

 

St Ives Harbour from The Malakoff


white right up in
          the middle of green
and the green’s on blue
          poured on it still
                    liquid underneath

 

St Ives, March 2002
[The Malakoff is a point high up above old St Ives
– where there is now a small bus station]

 

 

St Ives Harbour


sun into a square
tries to circle
encircling the island

yellow green sand
blue green water

 

St Ives, April 2002

 

 

Poldhu


whole sea is in air, flying
ocean entirety
white glare
grey
gull-headed
hovering
rolling out
of darkness for
coast edge

an illusion,
all’s one to water,
what it can’t reach, land,
flooding its usual motion,
what it does
all times

trans posed
poised no panache
about to,
          remember,
                    on rocks butterfly
                              rocking colour mass
                              at one remove

 

[Pol dhu is Cornish / Kernewek for “dark water” or just “black pool”
- and the name of a bay on the west of The Lizard peninsula]

 

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