The End of the Isle

This then is the aching aeonic mating dance
of Gaia and her second husband Okeanos
her soaring arrogant cliffs jutting
coquettish, signalling response,
his ceaseless watery furor slowly breaking her resolve,
dissolving her minerals,
his shellfish recycling them.

I have descended at least a hundred feet
clambering over great slate sheets and tufts of turf.
All along the hump of gorse and grass which curves towards the
break, swift-sliding death,
at thirty two feet per second per second,
the rock bleeds quartz, whitish exuded drippings
down in tapped veins two hundred more feet to
the tide-rounded boulders, lost sons of the cliff,
spattered in yellow and orange lichen
as if giants fought their battles with mustard and Russian dressing.

The above I jotted in my notebook as I stood on the cliffside on the southern part of the Isle of Man on March 21, before hiking down to the Calf of Man Sound and up to Cregneash, a Manx folk village which is unfortunately closed for the season.