NEPTUNE INTO ARIES

For J & JC

And Mothers Day, withit.

The world, quite bonkers -

madmen in ascendancy,

economies berzerk, clocks -

moon, tides and weather systems 

changing

as we sit in the castle ruins

having cappuccino.

Whilst your dogs go potty

attached heinously to leads and wheelchairs;

when they thought they were going for a wild run: free.

There used to be chains across the harbour here

so the pirates and their crafty ilk

became stuck 

unable to do their felonious trades within.

Where did the carved teak African elephant come from,

  one  leg missing?

- sunken in the Bay, covered with barnacles

 amongst bones, fish-shoals, kelp and galleon wrecks;

retrieved from a fishing net, long ago:

from what whaler, country, era, 

who knows?

Now safe in your veggie rack to ponder on;

from whose hand, skills was it carved - giften, stollen, bartered 

and brought to these western isles

as a memento, trade or trophy

by smuggler, merchant, sailor, thief.

When continental plates shifted, seas rose,

Permian landforms subsided -

and the Devonian batholithic

lava-flowed:  to this day 

a standing granite rampant, 

west to east;

 mystically otherworldly - overawing.

Images, with permission.