Walk The Chalk Celebration
(Seaford Head, East Sussex, September 2023)
Prising wildflowers from overworked land,
bright ecologists, shiny with hope, clear-eyed,
set out their stalls; while the artists stand
with them to celebrate the multi-billion coccoliths,
ghosts in this old Cretaceous hillside.
Here above the Cuckmere the flower flags fly,
Moon Carrot, Yarrow, Birdsfoot Trefoil,
raising our eyes to the wind on the side
of the valley – us the custodians of the soil
or sleepers who walk by and avert our eyes.
Here a spore mandala on the wall of South Hill Barn,
with its circular shadow of white filament
painted over cracked concrete like a balm.
Here, four seahorses of steel stand high
on the edge of the cliff. Beneath them the tide
slides out over the chalk that underlies
the seabed at Hope Gap. Here the unnoticed
sea anemones and burrowing worms
have become precious. Chalk aquifer returns
freshwater to the sea here, makes salt soft
and welcomes the seahorses that permeate
mythologies, that somersault on children’s walls.
Above, on the edge of cliff, a wicker bird 10ft tall
with red painted beak cries out in memory of flight,
mourns the gone black Chough, lost to our sight.
Under the awning of their stall the ecologists
plant seeds of hope here on this tired land,
tell the story of their Nature Recovery plan –
how farming that gives life to creatures and plants
is possible; how they talk to farmers patiently,
some recalcitrant, some keen; how Neolithic
herbivores would have cropped scrub and grass
just yesterday, to hold a balance specific
to this soil. So we join the chorus of voices
on the windswept field – saying sing the flower flags,
sing the old chalk, seventy thousand years,
sing the calm of the old Downs pushed up by Pangea,
carved out again by meltwater off the glacier,
sing the water held lightly by the chalk aquifer
to quench the thirst of thousands busy in cities,
sing the half-blind humans, who despite all
still find brave plans, speak for the future of the land.
John White 2023
