TO PAINT A SALT MARSH

Samphire and mare's tail and the salt marsh.

Nothing appears to have movement here
but the birds-it is where the white tern
pivots his swift course and on the tideline
dunlin and sandpiper dibble.
                                Otherwise,
at low tide, it's as if the brown sea
clogged in the mudflats. A spar,
tall and near the vertical, splits the view.

And on the horizon a grass-thatched sand-dune
looms like a northern fell. It
lays on the water's stillness precisely
its own stillness.

THE THIRST

A kingfisher darting the green scum on a pool
...