Ebb
Grange sands
Out on the marsh are dumps of brick,
half-brick and broken stone, algal
coated chunks of crete, a passing trick
of sand guides trying to hold a wheel
where wheels don’t turn, and sometimes fresh
creeks creeping where an old one crept
will show them, gravely, feeble stash of bone
long useless under mountain flesh
ladled on to tidal intercept
that sinks through high slack water’s undertone.
White egrets now are local here,
alighted heavy butterflies;
local as is local everywhere:
you put your foot down, there it lies.
It’s vulgar to distinguish weight;
though they may showboat yellow feet
that please observant strollers on the prom,
flap whitely and communicate
in heron voice so unpetite,
by settling and rising this is where they’re from.
To walk out here in winter keep
your destination loose in view
as canthus grit; with the wind, weep
that rain proves all ground not quite true
with cools of fallen sky, and strain
your leap from lump to slither edge
in boots with soles that are re-shod with slip.
The big tides linger along this chain
of pool and sheep-track, flooded sedge,
and here, a hole: low lip begins to drip.
Yes, this place, too, it’s on the move,
how can it found the brief locale
of my own things I might improve
by which I dog the littoral?
Each dawn we wake our tongues and laughter
among the trees, across the rocks,
the geordie, old norse, latinate and scouse -
sound as quick and slick as water
through grass and silt, such sound as mocks
first person in a story, stand of house.
But this is personal, this is us.
We’ve come to find a firmness, grip
can only be vertiginous:
it’s here, the seasoned choiceless trip
we mass at; for sky-mirrored pledge
I play my toes in wobbling sand,
cry up the day’s erasure by the flood,
and stake a placing at this edge
where elsewhere nuzzles into land -
it’s ebb that flutters fresh creeks in the mud.
Comments