On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach

The car radio tuned to Wessex FM;
a snug interior shifts to buffeting winds:
great humps of air hitting broadside
with sporadic sheets of rain; the wild sky:
a grey strata, layered in dark densities;
the causeway cars shunt and counter-veer
with resolute headlamps and full-speed wipers. 

I navigate the car-park's pot-holed harbour
and berth beside the Fleet lagoon. I should
be dropping anchors, tying up to jetties.
In cabin-calm ignition-off, the fury outside
redoubles, subsides, assays the doors again.
I watch a wading cluster of oyster-catchers
hugging the mid-tide channels; sea-gulls
hang and dive like kites that pull away. 

Mid-day lights on Portland blur
on high-winding rock - a hump-back breaching
furious sea; the lighthouse pricks
a pin of light and teeters back from the edge.
On the radio, an anecdotal voice recounts
the incidence of Portlanders self-stranded:
self-contained like Crusoe, content to stay
holed-up, removed in rocky outposts. 

I venture out at last: a rushing intake
of clamorous flapping air and gull-piercing
cries of sea-marsh and smarting salt;
a stepping-stone skip then foot-crunching
trudge up the shingle ridge to reach
the beach's summit. I climb and peak to mountains
avalanching mass churnings of sea and sky. 

Standing-up is a free-fall, a brace
against the rush and roar of grey gusts
face-slapping with maniacal fury.
The spit and spume of foaming froth; a rake
of wave-clawed pebbles skittering seaward
then blasted back like buckshot spraying shrapnel
down the long shore's far-reaching drift. 

Grey mists and white mists contend,
cartwheeling the long shingle ledges -
an iron churn and pounding gouge of surf.
I lean like a wave-tossed buoy
on the vast edge of indifferent space:
the car is gone, Portland Bill is gone,
and the lonely planet hangs in futile rage.