Crossley-Holland: "Faithful As A Wordfisher"

BEACHCOMBER

Faithful as a wordfisher,
there he goes, old magpie of the foreshore!
Face chafed and chapped like driftwood.

Parcelled shapeless against
winds straight off the icecap
but look! agile even so, jumpy as a tick,
quick in his pickings.

Scoofs along the tideline scurf,
his oily sack full of consonants:
hunks of wax,
and seacoal, rubber ballast, cork,
sodden gleamings.

And swinging in that shoe-bag hitched
to his broad belt?
Ah! In there, sunlight and amber moonlight,
emerald and zinc and shell-pink,
Aegir's vowels.

--Kevin Crossley-Holland

from the sequence "Waterslain"
from his Selected Poems,
London: Enitharmon Press, 2001


Note: I can't say that I follow all the lines above, but the general situation and the definite fun with language and scene I follow quite well.

And, "Faithful as a wordfisher": that's a description I like, using "as" both as a comparison and as a signifier of action/behavior. Starting Monday I wordfish with whole crowds of new students.