Tuesday 5 May 2009

Salt Marsh at Porlock

A childless shelduck shuttled
up from the half-colours
of plants in the half-land
between water and earth –

leaves rough as dogs’ paw-pads,
grass turned to salt, and there
a rough bone of wall
like a denial, a proof

that someone with hands,
and blood, womb and gritted teeth
once lived here, houses dying
with the trees blown light

by the salt-wind. I took
a photograph, but the sea’s
chemistry aged that too,
turned the stump-perched crow

to a scratch of charcoal
on a bloodless vein of light.