Scolt Head

I cycled down for the start of the next round of clinker races and then tried to seek out somewhere for my sister to park when she arrived from Norwich. It was packed with an incoming tide. I waited for her and then guided her to the spot I’d found and we got on to the ferry for the island. We headed round to the seaward side and I swam. We then jumped on the ferry and he took us on the short hop to East Head and we sat watching the world sail by before walking back.
Ice creams were had and then I cycled to M&R’s who keep my old bike for me and my sister took me back to the campsite and we had a cuppa before she headed home.

Two Heaney poems … both wonderful …

https://poets.org/poem/kite-aibhin

A Kite for Michael and Christopher

All through that Sunday afternoon
a kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, an armful of blown chaff.

I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of newspaper
along its six-foot tail.

But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to lift a shoal.

My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.

Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand in here in front of me
and take the strain.