Guest Poem by Ralph Mold

Ralph Mold lives in Farncombe, Surrey, works in London and writes poems on trains. His work has appeared in The North, Orbis, South and as part of the Poem of the North. He is particularly pleased to have had a poem published in Acumen, because not only is it a journal he has admired for some time, but it has also allowed him to branch out from only appearing in publications with geographical titles. This poem is from Acumen 110.

Scilly Shore

Here white foam flecks the fingers
of cracked black granite,
one world surrounds another
and edges seep inwards.

The thousand-mile momentum of waves,
the strong, slow, shunt of currents,
are broken, parted, giving up
their gifts, blindly, unknowingly.

Live thrives in the mixing,
the erosion and remaking
of rock-sure certainties
to fractured sanctuaries

where crabs creep from cracks
through shrimp-churn confetti,
where waving anemones wait
for the sea to return the sun.