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Tide Clock

A tide clock sits
on my kitchen wall
set to the flows of a distant place.

I stir porridge when the harbour is full
folding in a brown wash of cinnamon
while maybe a path of sunlight bisects a bay
and fishing boats are setting to sea
dots hauling themselves to a horizon

I break cool salad leaves
for an early lunch
when the sea is falling
may be leaving the scripture of seaweed
across a storm beach

I mark the time of low tide
with a cup of coffee
when the steamship boilers
by the island rocks
may be dancing in heavy surf.

When the sea is returning
I cook Courgettes
turning the slight golden disks
while maybe thin lips of surf are trickling from
one sand ripple to another
re-ordering thin black lines of wreck coal
across a beach

I take only a rhythm
no stone is picked from a beach
or sea gull's feather found
in the sand of a road corner
or battered oyster shell
eased from a tide pool.

I also have a tideclock
in my head and it is set to you
the rhythms of your walk along a quay
stepping over the frayed mooring ropes
of the heavy brush of a bag of fish
against your thighs
as you walk up cemetry hill
surf boiling on a beach below you
of the lungfuls of spring air
taken through your lips
of your heart slowly beating faster
as you rise up a road
between granite cottages
only to fall as you spin
and look over a sunlit bay
and gannets turning in a wind.