at this cottage high above the straits.

Now you grab for buttercups, daisies, clover,

self-heal – and edge toward sleep in the stillness

under the parasol. Ringlet butterflies

flit across the grass. Blackbirds forage

among the mulch of last autumn’s leaves

at the margin where garden and woodlands merge.

A pheasant rattles somewhere out of sight.

Watching over you is a privilege.

Some time since last year, a sheep, lost in the woods,

died at the lawn’s edge. An elderberry

sapling is growing through the skull. The trees -

ash, oak, beech – are loud with hidden insects.

Nearby, a pair of buzzards is breeding.

They soar above us suddenly, calling:

pee-yah, pee-yah – hover, then bank away

over the tree line. And just as suddenly

the air is replete with other birds – swifts,

swallows, house martins, a jay, a herring gull.

On the mainland, roiling clouds envelop

Moel Wnion and the Carnedd range beyond,

their iron age settlements and the sheep runs,

and thick rain, all shades of grey from pencil

to gun metal, fills Bethesda’s slate quarries.

A military jet rip-roars the length

of the straits, simulating the Persian Gulf,

and a small factory ship thrums steadily,

hoovering mussels from their beds for Spain.

It’s a chancy universe, little one!

But here the sun still shines. You are waking.

Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA

At her back, the South Atlantic’s rolling seas,

those ice blue waters, break, skittering

on the silver sands. Burgeoning with child,

she smiles for the camera, as always

optimistically. Mussels encrust the rock

she leans on, kelp bobs like seals on the foam

and Southern Right Whales blow almost out of sight.

Due west, across the unbroken miles,

is Buenos Aires and the teeming hectares

of the Americas. We turn inland. An ostrich

high steps through proteas and heathers,

a tortoise navigates the undergrowth.

Some flowers bloom only after fire. Good choice

to be here on this cape of storms and wrecks.

She carries so many of our pasts -

refugees and indigenes, blacksmiths

and architects, poets and sea captains…

That first image of the future, of something

commonplace, something extraordinary,

will surface without summons, rise instantly,

engulf her forever.

The sting ray slipped from the azure surface

of the narrow, empty sound, its wings

and tail so large and swimming in the air

for what seemed so long,  we stared, speechless,

and, after it had gone, said: ‘Did you see

what I did?’ and looked along the silver beach

for others who’d seen but no one seemed amazed.

MIRABELLA GULF, CRETE

Under the cobalt waters are mermaids,

Minoans, Cretans, Venetians, Turks, Britons,

Germans,  lepers. Above are ferryboats,

jet skis and mottled sea snakes which slither

like sibilants onto flat rocks beside

the corniche. ‘Look,’ I say. You do – and shudder.

DEGANWY PROMENADE, WALES

We watch the Conwy mussel fishers, each

in his own skiff, at low tide, rake the bed,

see the shells clatter into buckets, hear

the men joshing – an immemorial trade.

We find a piece of driftwood – no bigger

than a pocket knife – chafed by sand, stone, oceans.

Because of the knot in the wood, the sea

could only shape it as a tail and head,

one side a snake’s eye, the other a ray’s.

Chance,  symmetry and perseverance…