On coastal path

Up and round

By headland edge on sand and stone

Passing clumps of gorse and heather

Bare rock is revealed as torn skin

Where no grass grows

A patchwork quilt of

Lime green lichen glows layered

Amid a temple with hidden stony beach

Cut off when tide is high

Barren except for knots of sea borne kale

This undiscovered country

Protected, hidden from wind and gale

 

Some parts remain untouched

By salt or spray

Revealing at low tide

Fetid pools gouged out

In clear green mossy rock

 

This tortured church remains

Scarred and etched by wind and rain

In walls of stern granite grey

Veined in agate white

A cruel and alien planet

In a place time has left

In this cleft

This grassy hollow

Giving way to stagnant pools drowned

In choking weed

No sound to be heard

Save that of a distant shrieking gull

Or the lashing

Of breaking wave pushing, forcing itself

Through a blowhole rock

Then dying down, withdrawing

In reverence to this place waiting

Until able once again to pay court to

This inner sanctum

To gently lick these very stones

Where silence prevails

Among the prayers for

Those who noiselessly pass

On their pilgrimage to somewhere else