Wendy Dosset draws on a Welsh folktale about a curlew rescuing St Beuno’s book of sermons when it fell into the sea during a miraculous crossing the saint made from the Llŷn Peninsula to Anglesey. She writes: “The poem is an attempt to convey something of her tenacity and creativity, but also her fragility. ‘There and gone’ is the story of so many species at this time.”
Curlew Writing
Curlew, saviour of St Beuno’s noble writings from the main
Back to the biting wind, tail-feathers blown against the grain.
Her tapestry-needle bill sifts and turns the silt,
Sifts and turns, sifts, persistent,
Weaving invisible weft through muddy warp,
Her own lines, disappearing,
There and gone,
Her cries, too,
Taken by the wind.
Aberogwen.
There and
Gone
Wendy Dosset
Wild Words editor Glyn Edwards has invited readers to submit their own poems in response to Curlew Writing, to be published on Am. Here are the responses:
Cockle Beach
a textured shoreline
richer than a tapestry
sand sea sky
a beach of bleached cockle shells
chequerboards of oystercatchers
the drama of plovers in the reeds
and above the tide-puddled fields
skylarks
dots in the blue
swans stretch-necked
wing beats as slow as heart beats
a curlew cry –
sacred messenger
harbinger of storms and sorrow
soul thief
Bethan Bithell
Tumulus
above Afon Aled, between Llansannan and Gwytherin
Yr Wyddfa,
Tryfan,
the Carneddau,
ancestor spirits protecting my kin,
and all of them you can see from here,
for high on the moor they buried me,
with a mound to mark my place.
Now the skylark sings for me,
the curlew calls my name,
and the bright-eyed hare
is nestling there,
in the place where
they buried
me.
Edmund Dixon
Bird count on Enlli
Over three hundred species over five thousand bird-watchers
have been recorded here
since 1953.
We mapped their provenance
the Aegean to Greenland England to Korea
Alaska to Patagonia.
Our migration models explain why
a Cretchzmar’s Bunting and an Inuit with a telescope
were both at the lighthouse today.
Edmund Dixon
Stone on the beach
Criccieth
I am home to barnacles, kelp;
sunlight on water dances
on my evening side.
Twice a day I am dry
but I do not count
the tides, the seasons,
my smoothing.
I feel
the pull of the moon,
one who understands me.
I am blind to the kingfisher
flaming between the swans.
Edmund Dixon
Red Robin returned
The summer solstice was almost upon us when I left
You were a daily visitor
Always near, a cheerful companion.
Then, a silence fell over us
It shook our ground. It shook our faith.
I returned, often, but you were absent
So it seemed.
No longer territorial.
I felt adrift
Searching, with hope of your return.
You were watching and waiting.
Waiting and watching, from afar.
Your puffed out breast the colour of glowing embers
You sit perched high on a wire
Peering into my soul with inky black beads
There is no mistaking
it is YOU, with your chirpy chitter-chatter.
My heart swells.
My love. My dear. I know you are near.
Sian Armstrong
Merveille du Jour
Your name trips off the lips.
Merveille.
Exotic by name and exotic by nature.
Merveille
Hiding in plain sight, to the unseeing eye.
Merveille
A hidden gem, in your magical mystical mantel.
Merveille
Likened to lichen.
Merveille
No surprise then we’ve never met.
Merveille
You are the wonder of the day.
MERVEILLE DU JOUR!
Sian Armstrong