Tidal Drag is a new poem by George Szirtes, commissioned by First Light Festival to provide inspiration to artists and school students as part of 2023’s Noon to Moon Project.
Tidal Drag
1
Neap tide and spring tide
and the moon on its journey
as the earth revolves
around the sun. Swell
and ebb as pebbles and shale
are dragged or thrown off.
Where do the ships go?
What tide is driving the sky
and the endless dark
on to the bright rocks?
2
The enormous dark
fills with a storehouse of stars,
all that space rubbish
dragging everything
in its wake. Life moves among
a crowd of planets.
We flick the ashes
of the green earth into space.
Everything must glow
in a fierce display.
3
Magnificent shows
of tidal power moving
on its own axis.
The sea is silent
yet roaring. The beach scrapes back
its tight hair of weed
and marram grass. Dunes
slick into waves. You are born
here yet borne elsewhere,
swept under the moon.
4
Planets drag planets
across a night sky full of
glass and eyes half shut.
The mechanism
creaks and vanishes. We sit
under the spot lights
of a universe
starring no particular
star, that is endless,
daunting, gluttonous.
5
You see the cars parked
along the shoreline. Hot tea.
Chips. We are waiting
for the tide to clip
rocks and wooden posts. Slap,
goes the first warning.
The moon is hidden
behind clouds but will emerge
like a clear statement
of wonder and grace
6
Then a new planet
swims into your ken. Where did
it spring from? Whose hand
fashioned it? You are
Keats meeting Chapman. The hand
waves across aeons.
Look mum, no hands, cries
the newborn. I made myself!
The gods of the sea
wave back, tide to tide.
George Szirtes, 2023