Three tanka from Staithes
This busy half-hour —
a heron has come and gone,
gauzy fog grown dense,
rising tide of afternoon
gained an inch against my boot
*
On the darkened beach,
lamplight from a single room
in a bungalow
cut loose on the clifftop’s fold
reaches down to us like stars
*
All I know is that
driftwood lifted from the sand
to burn in the stove
of our borrowed cottage is
the crowning of all my poems
Pete Green is a Sheffield-based poet and musician. Their work has appeared in The Fenland Reed, The Interpreter’s House, Caught by the River and elsewhere, and a debut pamphlet Sheffield Almanac is published by Longbarrow Press. See petegreensolo.com