A poem for National Poetry Day

Lampit Cove



In the fraught days as we fall towards the Ides of March
my daughter brings my grandson
to the small beach
at the other side of the quay wall
at Lower Town.

With the cave mouth that imprinted on me
in my early years,
and the hard grey sand
made of the ashes of my Father and my Grandmother
and the splinters of my Grandfather.

Finn (the Fabulous Finster, Finncicle, Finnosaurus Rex) voices his approval for the scuttle of the crab
“Hello Crab!”
and on sturdy legs stamps towards the sea,
ready to brave the wave.
He has such beautiful confidence.

And across the aber gwaun the grit of my Father holds hard in the nooks and crannies of the rocks at Lampit Cove, watches the great grandson he never saw, and compels the weed he anchors in the tide ripple to make Finn laugh.

March 2020