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OUT HERE ON THE COAST [revised and re-posted]

Out here on the coast I can taste bountiful

pleasures from The Garden of England;

the juice of luscious fruit drips from my lips,

as rolling Downs determine distance between

far horizons and rolling sea.

 

The ‘Pearl of Kent’, lustrous still, with oyster

beds exposed at low tide; few boats remain

of a fishing trade capsized. 

And I look  to where people speak in a foreign tongue behind my back,

and tracks lead to voiced vacillation,

shops selling single cigarettes; and a line                                                                              

drawn by anyone who cares to stake a claim to

whatever birthright they think they own.

 

Along the shoreline the young gather in

groups startled by their own exuberance.

Summer, re-imagined in their world-view,

as they prepare to cast off from safe harbour,

career and college bound. Press-ganged

onto a ship of fools, as Old Blighty sets sail

for uncharted waters.

 

Further on around the bay, ‘ANOTHER TIME’

off Fulsam Rock; Gormley’s Iron Man, rusted

brown, faces outward to sea. Western sculpture,

movement being human, isolated, in front of

concrete and glass edifice, while the country

turns in on itself under a Turner sky;

easily imagined strapped to a mast against

gale force winds, as the sun sinks slowly in the west.

 

I prepare to travel inward; my mind fixed on returning north.

 

 

  • Pearl Of Kent - Whitstable

     

  • ANOTHER TIME  - Exhibition of sculpture concerned with movement within the flow of time

     

  • Concrete and glass edifice – Turner contemporary museum Margate

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Comments

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Greg Freeman

Wed 9th Sep 2020 09:24

This is a wonderful poem, crafted, understated. There's so much here, if you care to look. 'Press-ganged onto a ship of fools as Old Blighty sets sail for uncertain future ... the sun sinks slowly in the west." Well, yes.

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raypool

Tue 3rd Sep 2019 17:48

Hi Trevor. Although I recall your earlier version of this (I hope I'm right!) it's always a pleasure to share with your observations, keen and detailed but delivered in brush strokes with a back story such as is here presented. You have captured an atmosphere that I felt when staying in the area. There is up the east coast a sort of lost kingdom by the sea which is reflected in a perceived delicacy especially sculpted by the light which seems so serene. I think of Benjamin Britten in Aldeburgh for example whose mysterious view of life was personified in the area.

Ray

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trevor homer

Tue 3rd Sep 2019 10:55

Keith - thanks for taking the time to comment. For me it is a comment on the present and a snapshot of thoughts on a recent visit to Kent. I'm very much of the here and now.

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keith jeffries

Mon 2nd Sep 2019 15:04

Trevor,

this poem has so much to digest for the readers who in their turn will interpret what you have written. There seems to be a touch of reminiscence as you ponder on Kent and then speak of returning northwards. I sense, although could be wrong, that there is a feeling of dislocation, of hankering after a better past. I am intrigued by the poem and shall re read it again later today.

Thanks
Keith

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