Green Island

One from the archive from 5th October 2005. I was going out with Annie, and Monday lunchtime she would sometimes pick me up and we would go to Green Island for a coffee and a hot dog (with onions and ketchup of course). I still enjoy going to Green Island, a place for picnics, and in fine weather sitting there, looking out to sea, enjoying a ham and pickle roll and a cup of hot chocolate. It is a beautiful little place to visit, a small oasis on the south east of Jersey. This poem looks at the site over time, from prehistory when the Neolithic peoples made it a site of burial, towards a future when the sea will finally claim it all.

Green Island

Spring is coming, a pale sun steadily
Growing warmer, and beside the sea
On outcrop, a tribe lays stone on stone
Making a small tomb, a rest for bone.

Time passes, the sea erodes the coast
Until the outcrop is now almost lost
Beneath the waves, only an islet here
Where once they laid bones so dear.

Antiquaries come, excavate the site
Take stones from erosion's blight
To safer ground, inland, again to lay
Them where they remain to this day.

Autumn is coming, a pale sun warmly
Touches the land one final time, sea
Still wearing the islet away, but now
It still endures, like weathered bough.

Now parents bring toddlers to walk
Lovers kiss and cuddle, hug and talk
Dogs roam the beach, enjoy the play
Near the islet, many come this way.

But one day Winter will come, sea
Turbulent, storm driven, it will be
The last of Green Island, as the tide
Takes where once men did reside.