Although dry land is done where grass stops short,
there is no meeting with the sea at all;
one pace ahead of me is nothingness,
beside this windswept playground of the gull.
No blurring of the littoral up here,
no traitorous masons' tongues interred at all,
no tidal disputes between land and sea,
not by this windswept playground of the gull.
The sky is both above me and beneath;
I cannot walk out there nor swim at all;
no salt spray's sting, no saturated skin,
not by this windswept playground of the gull.
Although below the breakers bash the rocks,
they never will this high perch reach at all,
nor ever will those rocks below be dry,
as by this windswept playground of the gull
that sends an invitation few accept,
to take a forward pace and end it all.
There are some, sadly, who that pace have stepped
to gain the windswept playground of the gull.
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Author Notes
Dealing, as it does, with the awful business of suicide, I did not want a cosy rhyme scheme for this poem; neither did I want the liberation of free verse, because the suicide is not a liberated person but one held prisoner by personal horrors. This minimalistic approach to rhyme therefore, is a form of my own devising. There are only two repeated words that could be said to rhyme (all/gull) and both are approximations.
Not being a mason I cannot be sure but I understand that on joining they take an oath that should they divulge the secrets of the brotherhood their tongues should be torn out by the roots and buried in the no man's land between high and low water marks, impossible of course on a cliff top!
About as different a coast from the marshlands as you can get are the rugged cliffs that tower straight up out of the sea. There are a few cliffs in Norfolk but they are nothing compared with those on the north coast of the Lleyn peninsular in North Wales.
The most impressive cliffs for me are the very high, vertical ones where there is no beach, no landing place at the base and where the sea pounds against an impenetrable wall of rock. It is at the top of one of those that I am standing, as near the edge as I dare, fighting off the vertigo that threatens to overwhelm me.
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