Harmers Haven

Harmers

This is Bernadette’s beach.
She walked here every day.
And this is Bernadette’s pool
though she never swam in it.

I wouldn’t swear she could
tell a gull from a plover.
She never said of a limpet “Oh,
this is Cellana tramoserica!”

I couldn’t say she knew
the names of the fishes
or her east from her west.
She wasn’t that kind of person.

But she knew the light that
creeps over the dunes at dawn,
the way it glances off the rocks
and plunges in near the cape

She knew the rock sculptures,
the Henry Moore and the Rodin.
She knew the sweep of the sand
and the swoosh of the swell.

She knew winter afternoons,
when there is no horizon
between the deep grey sea
and the deep grey sky

and how in a winter gale
if you open your coat wide
and lean out over the cliff
the south westerly holds you.