Chasing down the falling tide
An hour after dawn
Is oystercatcher heaven
On a glass still
Luce Bay
Sun bright morn.

Busy reflections skim polished sand
Bright orange, white and black.
Intently they toil
On this flat calm
Luce Bay
Sun bright morn.

They dip and bob and pull and tug
Squeak and squawk and scream.
They are in heaven, oystercatcher heaven
On this precious
Luce Bay
Sun bright morn.
 



A road, fields rising to small hills;
fields falling to a river and to woods;
rain oftener than not; a curlew fills
the silence with his single word,
the soft land drinks it in.

Indifferent cattle browse, crows
blow like black plastic, flop and bounce
in search of pickings-ones and twos,
harsh callers, rags and bones,
all hard nosed scavengers.

Mud-booted, following water under trees,
we watch a grey and yellow
feathered wagtail please
itself, drifting in the flow
of small ephemera, feeding.

Winding back at dusk, the windscreen
catches clouds no bigger than
my fist: starlings between
life and sleeping. They are gone
with one turn of the wheel.