Metamorphosis FIVE

DAY FIVE

MY MOTHER'S ASHES : Clive Donovan

Throwing up my mother's ashes

To the careless, indifferent, winds,

I watch them make their last adventure, 

Fetching over the cliff.

Some deposit in fissures and cracks

Where the rock roses and samphire grow.

On this scorched powder they will thrive, 

Fed by my dead mother's history.

Some prefer the wet froth of sea;

One final romp on crystal surf:

Their dryness slaked, they will compound

With that drowned antique sludge 

All life are emerged from.

And yet others dance, refusing to land,

Intent on observing a holiday...

But one flake lodges in my eye

Just to remind me:

Of impermanence of steady vision,

Of my mum's fierce love for me

And, that there are many ways 

To cry.

The Clench Rocks : Vivien Jones

They had warned us. The factor, the solicitor, any number of locals had shaken their heads and advised against building there. We had walked amongst scattered blocks, eyes drawn to the sea beyond the causeway, viewed through the bookend rocks like a painting in a frame. The dog’s whining we put down to his unfamiliarity with so much water. We built our cottage between the chimney height rocks with a garden strip on either side. Tommy was six that summer. He spent hours staring at the sea and the rocks, screwing up his eyes, taking a step backwards now and then. I mocked him when he came and told me that the rocks had moved. He didn’t laugh but pulled me to his viewing place and said he couldn’t see edge of The Outer Clench any more because the rocks of the Inner Clench had moved, blocking his view. I looked at the garden strips and saw earth freshly piled round the base of the rocks. By autumn the garden strips were rilled like corduroy and the closest rock stole daylight from every room in the cottage, Just before winter, when the walls began to crack, we drove away to the sound of stone shattering and the high keening of the dog.