Poem
Michael Laskey
SOUTH OF SIZEWELL
SOUTH OF SIZEWELL
SOUTH OF SIZEWELL
This is my footpath between birches and firsmy dogshit I’m always watching my feet for
my straggle of sycamores and holm-oaks clinging
to their dull leaves this honeysuckle wound
round brambles is mine and so is the bracken
my cliff-top’s here crumbling under the weight
of my antique anti-tank concrete blocks
strewn at odd angles and this is my beach
layered with shingle which shifts with each tide
but never arrives these are my tangles
of orange nylon netting my plastic bottles
and this is my guillemot with oil on its breast
washed up here freezing or starving to death
here’s my power station’s perfect white dome
dissolving in cloud my swept horizon
checked for my ships and these are
the waves I own building and breaking
my foam at my feet for this is my sea
at springs and at neaps infallibly more
than I can imagine moving
and changing me always waiting.
© 2008, Michael Laskey
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Michael Laskey
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1944)
Michael Laskey was born in Lichfield in Staffordshire. He read English at St John’s College, Cambridge, and then worked for ten years as a teacher in Spain and England. He has lived in Suffolk since 1978, working as a freelance writing tutor with a wide range of children and adults, and as an arts administrator.
He was one of the founders of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 1989 and directed it ...
He was one of the founders of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 1989 and directed it ...
Poems
Poems of Michael Laskey
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SOUTH OF SIZEWELL
This is my footpath between birches and firsmy dogshit I’m always watching my feet for
my straggle of sycamores and holm-oaks clinging
to their dull leaves this honeysuckle wound
round brambles is mine and so is the bracken
my cliff-top’s here crumbling under the weight
of my antique anti-tank concrete blocks
strewn at odd angles and this is my beach
layered with shingle which shifts with each tide
but never arrives these are my tangles
of orange nylon netting my plastic bottles
and this is my guillemot with oil on its breast
washed up here freezing or starving to death
here’s my power station’s perfect white dome
dissolving in cloud my swept horizon
checked for my ships and these are
the waves I own building and breaking
my foam at my feet for this is my sea
at springs and at neaps infallibly more
than I can imagine moving
and changing me always waiting.
SOUTH OF SIZEWELL
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