We have some amazingly talented local poets in and around the Levels. Stephen Cogbill, who has contributed some great work to the ‘Writing the Levels’ project, recently posted the following poem on the Magor Future Intertidal Space webpage:
Future Echoes
A minute or two by car
or an hour’s amble
to traverse this much torn
billiard-table of a landscape
Past the din of motorway and railway
whose straight or sweeping lines
cut with no respect
the warp and weft
of medieval field patterns
Over their digital devices
passengers catch
a glimpse
of the sun on the estuary
or a horse
wild-grazing
We move on foot
intent on close encountering
some facet of this place:
its network of reens
the sea-defences
the marshes
its big skies
or the shape-shifting
Inter-tidal zone
We fancy
we hear a curlew,
its solitary call
carried imperfectly
on the chill shore breeze,
a haunting sound
perhaps soon
to be safe
only
in our memories.
+++
On the sea-wall we stand
while we can
to confront the high tide
We share this landscape
with its ghosts
The children laughing
and running in the mud
Who left their footprints
8,000 years ago
The sawing and hammering
of Roman work parties
trying to tame the coast
with wood or stone
The shouts of long-gone,
putcher fishermen hauling
their salmon baskets
They are all here
In a hundred years
that high tide
will push the blue
line on our maps,
the Mean High Water Mark
by which we stand,
inshore
A transgression
not of blue water
but of the brown,
churning, sediment-filled
turmoil that is
Mor Hafren in spate,
its boiling surface
dappled with
cumulus-cloud shadows,
as it surges
into new won
creeks and marshes
+++
By then we will have become
its ghosts
our conversations,
future echoes
on the breeze.
The (Future) Wales Coast Path is a year-long series of creative events and installations about our relationship to land and water.
They are collecting images, words and sounds from people exploring the future intertidal zone. Visit futurecoastpath.org for more info.