Eric Ashford | + Follow Poet |
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Yonder

Yonder there, where twig figures bend
and blink out as a sea-swell slugs the beach,
there the netted thrash, then hauled, toggled and pinched
yet more, into a gill-snagging catch.

Far away a village rests, submerged
beneath a mossy night, yet some prowl out
seeking ways to scrub a bare-knuckled living,
some to find a new prayer in the restless surf.

There a woman in denim is digging for clams,
I trudge upon a leaky flow to edge near,
to see her blue buckets mouth, its salty slosh,
to tell her I laud her rooting stick, the prod and scoop
of her delving hands.

Here by the spume, a spotty dog runs and scuffs tidal pools, 
it scampers between weedy humps, a tangle of sea-scupper;
nose snuffling a tangy furrow in the sandy smaze.

Now the dawn sky breaks apart above and below,
let’s slip a far-off world as yet unmade.
Near or far seem only a fingerprint of wind and light,
a painted wave for distant viewing – 
always a yonder truth
on the margins of nil and naught.

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