Despite September and October being unseasonally warm this year in Cornwall, we have this week been visited with the more expected high winds, rains and squalls more typical of the Autumn season.
On the Craggy shore road, County Clare , Ireland.
The Flaggy Shore itself is where the flat stone of the Burren meets the sea. The force of the sea has left a mix of worn, flat stone steps ,like flag stones, along with lots of beautifully rounded limestone rocks.
David Clapp B&W photo The Burren
from here
You won't find the Burren in Cornwall but there are plenty of granite stones- this sculpted one is inland at the entrance to the Gwithian dunes.
There is a slate grey lake at Godrevy - well it's grey when the sun isn't shining), (see left and double click for larger size but I didn't capture the swans in this one)
and unlike the poem I did manage to get one here with his head
"busy underwater"
So now for Heaney's great poem
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level (Faber and Faber 1996).
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