Spring Tide

The tide rushes in and the sea-sand sighs.
Sussuration follows sussuration and the bladder wrack pops
Expectantly, pregnant with the knowledge of being stranded
High and dry, the plaything of a bored or eager child.

But the summer has gone, and with it the sandcastles,
The discarded buckets and spades, the crisp papers and wrappers,
Mementoes of a million al fresco meals


As the keener air delivers a verdict of wroth on slothful summer,
Dispersing along the shore a new and higher tide mark
(stained by the still-visible scars of human incursions)
So Autumnal genesis contrasts with the landlocked preoccupation
Of ripening fruit and dying leaves: here and now is born
The new order, briskly, efficiently removing all signs
Of summer hibernation and gentleness.

Flighting southward on the gale come the migrants:
Snow geese in thousand-strong skeins; teal, pintail widgeon
In twos and threes and hudreds, a wildfowler's dream;
And just beyond the sandbar, inshore for the first time in months,
Cod replace mackerel;
Mussel gatherers gather at low tide
Picking their careful way among the exposed beds,
wiping salt roughened hands over salt dried lips,
Anticipating.


As the year's deathward plunge gathers way towards life
So young men's fancy turns away from love; away from dalliance:
There is in the ending of the year written in sea froth
Another command.

The soul responds joyously to the sterner discipline of creation,
The seasonal call to harvest the dying and the living:
On land, the dying , from the sea nutritious exuberant life
to be killed; and thereby to fulfil the cycle.


Good Friday should have happened in Autmn; but then,
Who would have noticed the death of a good man?
It could have passed unremarked, ignored:
In the preparations for the dead season, the salmon in the river,
The wildfowl at the sandbar,

how could the passing of  a human soul
measure against such primeval events?


God knew what he was doing. Nevertheless,
The new birth from death would have satisfied the seasons' harmony:
Divine and natural timing in perfect accord.

Jesus' followers were fishermen,
Tax gatherers,
Zealots,
And a traitor.

Men of the sea,
men of the land,
and women who loved him.

He told them they would do even greater thing than he did;
Today we stand in a world
that loses sight of truth
and faith,
Washed away on an ebb tide of
Expediency and self seeking,
Ambiguity and word play.

And still there is a spring tide of hope.