Don’t believe for a moment that the sea-field
is a nothing, a dumb space between.

It’s all transmission: the long-breathed Atlantic-wide
bass plainsong of those great swells
funnelled into this narrower room – the way it chafes

and bridles – and the bicker of that tide-worn marriage:

the sea’s moods of approaching and withdrawing
wrapped around the river’s groping for its way to flow,

and all their troubled offspring, the slippery shifts
of currents. It’s all information: too many to count,
the buoys and beacons, each insisting on its fingerprint of light,

and the wind patterns fanning, light-and-darkening.

Wavelengths on wavelengths; we can almost hear…
but for the island’s interference. Listen: crackle-cackling

of the gull-storm in their season, other times, the never-quite-throat-clearing hack and hiss of waves on shingle. We try, try to tune the apparatus, but we never seem to get it right.