Scarlett Point

They never show pictures of the brown beaches,
With their perfume of seaweed
And garnish of what we’ve left behind.
Igneous teeth rise as from their graves
To countenance this horror
But Shakespeare never came to the Isle of Man.
Between them, in the cavities, you’ll find
Remnants of a campfire
Fragments of a fossil
Rockpools filmed over with bone-white lichen.
There’s a joke to be made here about comeovers,
But not while mum’s around.
Her description of the scene: very Game of Thrones.

The reservoir is its own community.
Populated by plastic, aluminium, nameless gunk,
And shopping trolleys.
Occasionally a gull will visit.
Fit for a postcard, the image is ruined
By a crown of lilies and the reflection
Of heather on the water.
A six-spot Burnet settles in the wildflowers,
Who takes as much notice of us as the planes overhead.
We must look so strange to insects;
Four limbs, two eyes, no brain.
Here, we sit around drinking nectar, like bees,
But then we leave a mess behind, like slugs.

The foaming summer sea is fenced off,
Put in its place with a belt of limestone.
We’ve covered the teeth already;
Here’s the spinal column,
Wracked by a terrible fall from some cliff.
An idea: we’ll carve out half the coast
The very bedrock of the island
And build a castle far away.
Burn the rest, mock the sea with the kilns’ lights,
And a thousand years later, we’ll call it all
National Heritage Sites.
Tread lightly,
Now.