- Öckerö
In the garden in sommarvägen, a westerly breeze
(the same wind which will later
bring a downpour, suppressing dawn)
circles at ground level, cools the planted pink wash
of lavatera, redcurrant, pink hydrangea, dwarf polyantha
and the sedum cauticola which has filled all space
between the bare and lichen-bearing
ice-sculpted metamorphic bedrock,
gusts the flag rope against the pole, sunk into that bedrock,
twelve thousand years exposed
beside the piledriven levelled till
where the whitewood house is raised,
carries seawater molecules, seeds, dust
and sediments invisibly; I feel that breeze
at my ankles, a constant in this newly
encountered landscape.
Prevailing westwinds are cooled and moisture-fuelled
from a passage over North Sea and Skagerrak; millennia
of continuous flow of alternating breeze, gust and gale
have left the islands commonly shaped, wilded north-west,
developed centre-east, managed south-east, harbours,
houses, plant-life havens.
Here there is rock and water, water surrounds rock,
and waves and showers and breezes and gales smooth
gneiss to a dull polish, pinks and greys, potassium and calcium;
the hollows in rock brim with pools of rain,
thrift and daisy share pockets of peat, dog-rose
colonises where the ice-till was deeper.
The rock emerged from water, a rising archipelago
and neighbouring mainland created a south-west foot
on a higher, sea-free, northern torso; here the strut
of a family of geese and human footfall are rare
in the course of time;
just the rock and the rain and the waves and the wind
and the self-seeding plant-life make a stasis, a balance,
a statement.
2. The Elbe (for Helmut Pfaff 1930-2020)
Twelve thousand year post-glacial riverrun,
one thousand km, flow habitually slow and full, incessant,
chill, deep, vegetation-flanked and tolerant of vessels;
but periodically, in the upper reaches, an intense precipitation
over days, has caused an over-reaching of the banks:
an emptying of unbroken nimbus skies, of rainfall
become river randomly into fields and villages, a rushed emptying
of fresh into salt water past Cuxhaven; a rushed spilling
and filling of the Fischmarkt in the city;
and in conversations flowing periodically across years,
the river’s role always resurfacing, free of timeline, full
of Ebbe and Flut; He recalled, often:
swimming the full cool breadth at Lauenburg,
pitching summernight tents under an insect hum on Neßsand,
Spring and Autumn heartfelt talking past the Kapitänhäuser
and breathlessly climbing steps in Blankenese;
watching the Elbphilharmonie rise from its plinth,
singing the Weihnachtsoratorium in the Michaelis choir,
the tower-top opening out the Hafen, filled with virtue and vice,
love and life, as all great human cities;
and, where the river ends, a late health-defying coach&horses trot
across the low-tide Watt to Neuwerk.
3 Naturschutzgebiet Lüneburger Heide
(landscape management of ‘natural’ landscapes is often necessitated by previous landscape mis-management)
Postcards from Wilseder Berg early August
The Heide, a created haven, a managed wilderness, cleared of trees
cleared of turf, cleared of trees, grazed until the heather supercedes.
This heather has lilac & rose-pink tones, stronger after the rainshower.
Tansy bitter buttons sprays have seeded generously and display
tight yellow balls above mid green pinnate compound leaves.
The roofs are decades-old worn back thatch; with living flowering heather along the ridge.
Distant Heideschnucken – german grey heath sheep – graze; and
x-shaped fences protect the garden grounds.
Young birches predominate a landscape still cleared and
periodically backburned; the rare rowans are rich in berries.
Thatched beehouses hold the hives which hold the bees
which browse the heather and create the Heidehonig.
The Berg is not a high climb but reveals a valley before the thickly wooded Harburg hills, morraines from the last ice-age – empty landscape, from this far, unmanaged; but only from this far.
4. Solway
Nith, Lochar Water, Pow Water, Annan, Esk and Eden,
Wampool and Waver;
a low-tide view from Campfield Marsh sees sand
and mud and a slight stream near to Scotland,
nothing of the ring of riverflow,
nothing of the inflow of the Irish Sea.
The upland forests beyond Dumfries are purple
on a horizon in another country.
And the focus resets to the foreground;
at first the sunlit emerald of saltmarsh grasses;
some are grazed back to a tight turf
springing under sole and heel;
untidy longer blades still drenched by a morning tide
laid flat, straw and green alternate.
Creeks and dubs reveal a weakness where accreted mud
leaked and crumbled in the force of tide,
the living geology twice daily scapes this land
of old marsh, middle tier, pioneer and mudflat;
through a wind which alters light by minute
ochres, greys and greens mutate as separate shades
and melt together; the tide is still unseen which earlier
had strewn the edge of marsh with pebble and cobble,
had carved fresh creek and dub,
the same flow selectively eroding and accreting,
making gaps and holes and mounds.
Here, life-forms live beside and on each other
in a concentration blurred by smooth and viscous mud,
but shown by forked tracks and a myriad of popping holes;
beaks and bills forage expertly for worms and mudsnails,
while, invisibly, the mudshrimps, which graze bacteria
and sulphur-black the brown earth of their territory,
multiply and fill the mud with family;
Buzzards hang and feed languidly from the sky.
Here, plant-forms live by seeding, rooting, pioneering;
subtle-shaded samphire and spartina move out
beside the vibrant green of sea-lettuce,
and hold fast to mudflat, withstand the waves of tidal flow,
and slowly spread, build a base,
add layers to the middle marsh.
The high-tide view from Campfield old marsh
sees only middle tier and water;
how the ring of riverflow and the inflow
of the Irish Sea have washed past, and mixed
into each other is unknown but is
a starting point of Solway.
Body of Writing 