The road grips the hillside
With tortured fingers,
Chalky-dry, like a climber’s hands
Precipitously feeling for the hold;
Side-winder snaking,
Along the dragon’s
Spine, fossilised vertebrae not
The only thing petrified today

The road follows the ridge,
The eye follows the road;
Topping a miserly col
Then yawing off-angle
Around another vexed switchback –
An ants’ column seeking sugar
Slavishly following to its end
The dramatic rock-guarded fort;

The Cape.

Where the billowing swell
Beats the bass-drum rocks below;
Where the changing winds
Scream a mocking siren to doomed mariners;
Where the cliffs rage,
And fall mortally away
To the bullion-stacked holds
Of a hundred triremes.