Esk
There’s a definite order to the things
Spooled within the North Sea’s capacities:
Bold obelisks of Grey-Green-Yellow-Blue
Risen from chloroplasts and river-run
And oil seed, each intentionally placed,
Articulating magnetic spectra
To conceive spaces between open fields
That almost wash into the Esk if not
For the cosmic inevitability
Of colour. There are also suggestions
Of nearly recognisable shapes:
Lozenges, twisted wood, rounded triangles,
Alive and dead as the deepest sea’s secret
Drawn on Dawn’s muscle memory of Norsemen,
Long disassembled and therefore resigned
To never wash ashore again; a peace
Burial under the East Cliff’s trauma.
But it’s there, distillate in flower heads
And granular countryside in the prisms
Of a honeybee’s sober eye sockets.
They used to put East at the top of the map
Because light rose through old Jerusalem
And disseminated Christ to the world.
Even now, His bones no longer the Sun’s
Scaffold, we persist in resurrection,
Miscellany interrogated by
Ocean-light until objects are not themselves.
