Moon-Crazed Work

Stephen Cogbill

A November Coast Walk of 25 miles requiring a dawn start and after-dark finish.

---

1. Grey mists
   roll back
   as I peer
   offshore
   at the silt-fast
   ship
   ribcage of oak
   hull planks
   now voids of
   dim daylight
   grounded there
   awaiting
   the lifting tide
   that never came.
   
   

2. The large
   time-toppled
   tree
   salt-claimed,
   lodged against the
   concrete certitude
   of the
   sea wall
   catches the first brightness
   of the day.
   Beneath it
   I tread
   the duvet
   of seaweed
   and flotsam
   the tree’s bed
   before a high
   Spring tide
   calls it 
   falteringly,
   to its next
   voyage.
   
   

3. Past
   the rootless
   sea-sick
   tree
   past
   the jealous
   still rooted
   ship
   at
   Passage Wharf
   I stop
   to watch
   and hear
   the fickle tide
   first lapping
   then surging
   around
   the Pill.
   
   

4. Mor Hafren
   sets about 
   its
   moon-crazed
   work
   scouring
   the flats
   carrying
   in its flow
   beneath the
   patience hardened
   gaze of
   stock-still
   fishermen
   an invisible burden
   the fish,
   once
   daylight fails
   my only
   fellow travellers.