The Watcher on the White Cliffs~a question of national security

Looking behind from my eyrie I see

a surrender of wild flower meadows,

yielding bows of wind blown trees

a poet’s England, taking the knee

mocking a lonely climb to my cliff-top obscurity

the febrile grass chorusing my guilty steps.

I’m here to look emergency in the face

the unknown watcher on Heothgar’s shore

forcing my eyes to catch first sight

of the first Grendel face to corrupt

Albion’s white unbroken island horizon.

Look here, it takes heroics of bygone times

to stand a sentry on the Saxon shore

within a concrete skeleton, a WW2 bunker

a ‘Frontline Crisis Centre’, restored by backers

to mercenary me to the Freedom Foundation,

whose crypto-currency pings my fortune

to live-stream fictions of migrant invasion.

The hatred’s some might call out as crimes,

are just bullet lies in civilisation’s endless wars.

I zoom the lens. Is it a gull, or a ghost hull?

My finger twitches on the shutter trigger,

a phantom boat, a shadow I can shame

and sell for thirty silver frames per second…

the oceans are as empty as binocular glass.

I lower the sight. My breath fogs the screen,

the fog—that's the only migrant I've seen.

They pay me best for so called ‘tipping points’,

a frail craft slides under, panic’s last breath

and sea-silence cheers the assumed deaths,

‘Each click manacles minds in an instant’.

No luck today. ‘OK Nigel, I’ve done my duty’,

there’s nothing but the wash of waves,

a scarlet gash slashed across the night

where Calais falls under wildfire flames.

beyond, over Europe’s failing empires,

lands cracked in  drought and swathed in fire.

I stumble and depart into a scarlet dawn

‘Red sky in the morning’, an idiots warning.

From my sleeve I flick away a flake of ash,

a sudden agony of burning in my nostrils,

a diverse fever of hands, through the smoke.

Could it be I’m facing the wrong enemy?

When in doubt, please check your screen

and on the beach before me, here for the kill

appear invasive shadows of heat and dust,

isn’t this just where we need watchers like me?