Issue 9: Peter Carpenter (for Peter Robinson)

The Walk Out

The very last of October and blackberries

still there, edible, past barbed wire coiling

from fence-posts in diminishing concentrics   

and it’s cumulus that’s built up a case  

over an old haunt, the beach at Walberswick.

We are left to imagine it -- the tide angling

into gradations of pebbles, staggered groynes.

Verticals in flat-lands play such funny tricks

so let’s keep our heads down, take in bracken,

its fish-spine patterns, ivy over flint, hacked-at

nettles spring-green, resurgent, a sign for ‘loose

recyclables only’. On this ‘characteristic’ open

heath we might catch silver studded blue butterflies,

and, later on, there’s the strong chance of stargazing.

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