This began at Land’s End, Cornwall a few years back but was only published in my collection Original Clichés earlier this year.

tethered
Lands End, Cornwall

a knot of photo-taking tourists then separated
a lone man in a blue parka against the lead-grey sky
holding an orange reel flying a kite tethered
to his exultant arm

mainland reaching further out over maen cliff
the sea diving and soaring with the falling cadences of gulls
an arc of arm and arc of string weightless as a pencil line

stacked granite slabs squatting on cliffs thoughts of d-day
francis drake, chichester, pilgrim fathers cutting the string
what were their thoughts leaving plymouth
and passing this no return point?

chasing a new world.
soldiers who might return.
or not.

the kite restrained to the motherland by an impossibly-thin umbilicus,
trying to leave, plunging dipping straining its radius. there is no land’s end.
it’s 1 mile to longships and 28 to the scillys
and 3174 to new york.

we are all of us anchored
to some piece of land,
somewhere.


© rob walker 2016
from Original Clichés
Ginninderra Press