Photo of Nicholas Hagger writing a poem, 'The Church of Storms', in Gunwalloe, Cornwall, 18.8.1989. Five years earlier to the day, 18.8.1984, he wrote 'Sea Force', a sonnet (see below), also at Gunwalloe.

From Collected Poems, p.516

SEA FORCE
Sea surges onto craggy Cornish cliffs,
Wave after boiling wave pours round the cove;
Flinging up spray on a dozen rocks, it biffs
And dashes where I sit like Olympian Jove.
What energy keeps its breakers rolling in,
Splashing with surf, thundering from the curl?
Scientists say “It is the moon”, and grin,
But I know it’s a force, a power, a swirl
That crashes in from calm and froths to shore
And rolls each wave that fumes where the foam droops,
And as the wind blows in the low-bent gorse
I know it is itself, a thudding law,
An elemental power where the gull swoops,
The endless boom and roar of life’s tidal force.
18 August 1984