Rocks without names
I watch the silence out there
through the hurly gush of Atlantic
and tide swashing at everything I mean,
if I could find words.
I keep hearing it say nothing
to me. The moon shining
on white flecks of rock in the cliff face
does it all.
I’m looking at the rest of my life
from this shore. If only
I could swim out to it
but the waves are too high, too cold.
The language is in code
and I could do with some language
for the other side of now, but these
are the ones that carry everything – wind, sea.
Rebecca Gethin has written five poetry publications and has been a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Messages was a winner in the first Coast to Coast to Coast pamphlet competition. Vanishings (which is about endangered species) from Palewell Press and a second chapbook from Marble are forthcoming in 2020.