Kettles whistled
In the cluttered teatime kitchens
All down the rows of houses
In this sleepy maritime town.

Beneath the wireless crackle
Came the formality of words
At seventeen fifty four
The scones and jams were laid.

And so it began:
The fragments of forecast
The language unlearnt
Crystallised over time:

Words and numbers
Gail force winds
Knotted into a lexicon
Ordered like morse code.

Forth, Tyne, Dogger.
Trafalgar, Fitzroy, Sole,
My personal favourite, Lundy,
Conjuring still images

Yellowing with age:
Men to the capstan
Heaving their weight
The high sea’s swirling froth

Foaming, forming patterns
Where lobster pots were cast
As buoys bob restlessly
And the briny wind chaps the skin.

We awake from sleepy submersion;
The transmission slowly recedes.
The men, somewhere, tug the ropes;
The Voices guide them home.



A poem by Fred Yeast.
Sept 2011