At Brighton, on the tideline, I met a man who could have come straight out of the pages of Dickens or Wordsworth. We chatted for a while but I did not want to delay him. A moment of blessing.


the fishering man

perhaps
no-one else
noticed him
the fishering man
alone
he strode
the emerging tide
with spade
in hand
headlight
dark marked
his face
bent upon
the honest slavery
of hunting
so to live
silent
solitary
studying
the worm seeker worms
cast down
his eyes
his shoulders high
against
the smouldering heavens
his shadow
time less
time filled
time free
neither you
nor me
his equal



Poetry by Peter Humphreys
Read 751 times
Written on 2007-03-26 at 22:28

Tags Fishing  Work  Brighton 

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Mark J. Wood
"the worm seeker worms
cast down"

I like the tie-ins of the noun worm and the verb worms and cast (verb and noun - two incarnations in one physical word): it's like a rhyme of meanings rather than of sound. I also like the shadowing rhyme of "shoulders" and "smouldering". These have give a wink to meanings rather than taking a peat-cutter to them. Very subtle and it adds so much to the atmosphere of the story; it's like a haunting harmony to a melody.

Mark.
2007-04-02