Notes from the City, to the Sea
Today in the journal we're introducing a new talent: Cornish poet and singer/songwriter Josiah Mortimer currently lives and works in London, but he yearns to be back by the sea. If you'd like your poem to be featured on these pages, contact one of our editors, or use the form here.
Notes from the city, to the sea
I like my water free.
Not locked in, with concrete
or hemmed with steel
The barriers of old dockland
choke the estuary,
trapped by machine-hewn granite,
bordered by quay
But on the margins of this isle
three hundred miles away
from an oceanless empire
the sea breathes effortlessly.
It lolls, and rolls,
and lazes, and lashes
with total impunity.
If you want to witness liberty –
and feel it, too –
stand on Bedruthan steps
high above the waves
They breathe into you there
so all you can think is:
‘Engulf it all’, or
‘Share that precious liberty’
But I am not on those steps
where granite is uncarved
(not by man, at least)
or among First Nature, as it wants to be
Instead, I am back to wharf
and the cold humanity
of paved-over wetland
Terra firma, foot-worn
by those seeking
a semblance of the sea
But it’s a poor copy.
The water here is a lion, caged
There is, though, I’ll admit,
a memory –
which is, incidentally,
why I’ve come here;
remembering, yearning
for a Real Thing:
the wild roar
of Cornish coast
rattling headland, defiant
Shouting to the sky:
‘This is what it is
to be’
Here, in this huge city
I strain to hear it –
over aeroplanes, cars,
crowded high streets
But by the docks
I think I feel something
a shared memory, or
the song of a longing
for that precious liberty
And if I focus, I can feel
the desire of bridled water,
to roar at the sky once more –
‘I am free, truly, free’