ESTUARY IN SEPTEMBER

Though mist muffles my sight and smudges seabirds’ cries,
nothing in the dunes can take me by surprise.
Birds here beat the air with stiff oiled feathers: the swish
of strident, striving wings heralds each overpass —
an oyster-catcher’s flirt, the raucous rasp of a gull,
the half-speed lap of stab-billed heron, heavy with fish.
No snake or lizard can hope to slither past my toes
undetected by my labrador’s pointing nose.
So at ease in a certain world I skirt the marram grass:
the shoal where seals haul out is blanketed, the hull
of the rotting coble is beached on a bank of slimy fog;
I tack steadily on in the wake of tail-waving dog.

A distant foghorn booms like a bittern — thoughts drift
to legends of wrecks and wreckers, of sailors’ spirits wailing
their cold anger through herring-gulls’ blood-specked beaks, sailing
the air as once they sailed the first six waves. I lift
my head, aware that just outside my sphere of sight,
as if condensed from wraiths and feathers of mist, a white
enormous something floats: I catch the intent eye
of a snowy owl. Slowly behind the dog she coasts,
hoping he’ll flush out prey: and then she boldly ghosts
me — as curious about my presence here as I
am about hers. For five stopped minutes her silent flight
entrances me, till mist resorbs her from my sight.

As we turn our course for home, the haar, clammy and grey,
tries to make believe it’s an ordinary day.

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