mudstone crumbs
shell
fragments
finest sand
tidal
grind
every day
every
night
a medium of
crawling
life
compressed
baked
lifted
blown away

salt
marsh
shallow
soil
shingle
marram
grass
fescue
grass
tidal
path
creek
of
pollen
falls
in whispers

in the clay in the loam in the top of the soil
in the sand in the molt of the sea

in the light sand the light sound of shift in the swash
zone waves burrow for release

in the bend of the body
I balance my current only takes me back
when seawards seawards is the call of my curve
& no turning

Two large cormorants flew rapidly and very low across the water heading directly towards Langstone Rock, where Dawlish Warren joins the coast just beyond the western edge of the Exe estuary. Their wing tips were almost touching the choppy water. This must have been about 7:45 on Friday morning; I was thirty yards or so out in the sea, only my head visible between the waves that the cormorants flew in among as they powered along one behind the other. I had come down the concrete lifeboat ramp and taken just a few steps on wet sand scattered with various shells, little gleaming stones, and scraps of seaweed, getting quickly into the cool water. The sky was piled up with dark gray cloud overhead but clear and bright at the horizon. The two birds passed close by and continued on their way indifferent to me watching them from the water and they gave no indication if they saw anything unusual.

she swam
only at night
on the spring tides

in the silk light of water
slipping her over
the mud flats

when they studied why she did it
drifted far beyond her limits
though it made her vulnerable to prey

several theories came
but none swam
at night in a spring tide
in the silk light unsure
of itself
becoming only what is left
after breaking

herring gull
black-headed gull
arctic tern
oystercatcher
turnstone
sanderling
carrion crow
jackdaw
white wagtail
rock pipit
peregrine
kestrel
buzzard
brent goose
cormorant
kingfisher
farther out
gannet

stomach of fur
coughed up at low tide
stranded

snowfall of fur
dusting the mouth
sanded

out of this
worms fall
soft as whispers
coiling into faun-
ing “Aphrodita”

& out of her hair come the corpses
of a swallowed sea

mussel
shell
oyster shell
clam
shell
cockle shell
whelk
shell
limpet shell
winkle
shell
razor shell
crab shell
lobster
shell
prawn shell
sea
lettuce

she
windblown sand
seashell sand
shifting sand
she
sea sandwort
sea rocket
sea holly
she
half sand
she both sea
she half sea
she both sand
she is a both-formed thing

she
wool sand
cotton sand
wood sand
she
sea leather
sea crystal
sea skin
she
half wool
she both skin
she half skin
she both wool
she is a woollen skin

she
asphalt soil
nylon soil
sandy soil
she
landscape
escape
seascape
she half soil
she both scape
she half scape
she both soil
she escapes

And swimming my slow breast stroke out to the channel I saw a darkwinged butterfly come flying in above the waves, moving with the breeze, heading for the dunes. Was this a migrant painted lady, third generation, from Africa?

drifter    on the surface
upside down dead
water

floater upper sheltered
on the littoral fringe
lower very sheltered

  swimmer upward of hundreds of thousands
of hundreds of thousands
of hundreds of thousands of hundreds of thousands of hundreds
of thousands of hundreds of thousands of hundreds of
thousands of hundreds of thousands of hundreds of
thousands      of hundreds    of thousands    of hundreds   of
thousands of hundreds of thousands of hundreds of
thousands of hundreds of houses of hundreds of
houses of         of hundreds of houses of hundreds of
houses of     of sands of houses of sand of
houses of of sand of hums of sand of
hums of sand of hum    of sand of
humming

poetry-magazineSea Holly

Sea Holly