Eight Instructions of Peter Young

(for Peter Young)

Peter Young’s cottage on the Norfolk coast has been in the ownership of his family since childhood. Now semi-retired, Peter has hardly made any alterations to the property overtime, nor to its furnishings.                                               

1.

Lifting the needle

on Peter Young’s vinyl record collection,

what I hardly have an inkling of

never left,

if the mood is right.

 

If the mood is right,

boats berth upon buoys,

low tide supporting not the going

but the staying.

 

If the mood is right,

dipping sun rubs old varnish on.

Mood or no mood,

coastpath walkers

drawn to the unanswerable draw back.

                       

2.

Peter has rebuilt the garden wall

after a recent flood               

but it doesn’t stop boats

leaning over for a chat.

 

Gathering up

notes and maps

I leave by the side entrance.

 

Boats are used to that,

to the way we treat them

in the absence of their owners.

 

3.

Adorning the sitting room,

hangs a painting by Julian Trevelyan

depicting three fishermen

grimacing down on the harbourside,

hands pocketed, gossiping,

identical jumpers,

identical trousers,

despiritualised as a seagull’s screech

having sold their sardines

pulled dripping from the sea’s apron that morning.

 

He paints it well,

a seagull’s screech,

does Julian Trevelyan.

 

4.

Peter’s television works

but only just,

so the intergenerational drama

sold to international broadcasting

we have been following

redacts like white-sailed dinghies

on a go-round of the creek.

 

5.

Crunching exoskeletons,

ribbons of lost property

inch ever closer to the coastpath,

the level of welcome

terns and natterjack toads

can expect from civilization.

                       

6.

From Deepdale Marsh

sited on the mainland,

a windmill sails into plain view.

 

Reed buntings straw-bustle,

scalloped eddies rush at scaly saltings

voicing no general urgency.

 

Not they, yet I notice then

mainland sails never spin,

muffled as they are within

the great validity of this ecosystem.

           

7.

Long after the creek darkens,

birds leave their cries,

sailors their last possessions.

 

8.

Along the sand, I am following 

your sky-blue wind jacket,

tracking a surface of great magnitude.

I have read about experiences like this

in articles written by astronauts

when the sense of place and conscious self

gives way to the thrill of things untried.

 

I pick up shells the colour of laughter

which crumble pathetically.

No-one tells the sea when to laugh.

Wreathes of sand like genies

switch course in a hissing soundscape.

                       

Eventually,

you will turnabout.

 

Eventually.

When the mood is right.