John Cotton
The Sea
'The sea has its own time' - T.S. Eliot
A pastel morning
We walk the shore-line
Where the retreating sea lisps
And sucks the ridged sand
To abandon its slough
of crab’s carapace, rot-soft timber,
Fragments of nets and untenanted shells,
Its hushed whispers sip the air
It scents with kelp and wrack,
Salt and its iron-eating corrosiveness.
A constant we can rely on.
More durable than the stone it polishes
To an ultimate detritus.
Our womb, our primeval cradle:
But a bad enemy
When its groin cracking mass
Heaves sullenly in its bilious depths,
And at night we can hear it
Sulkily rushing towards us.
We trust it to absorb our poisons,
An insult it will repay when it outwears us.
We walk the shore-line
Where the retreating sea lisps
And sucks the ridged sand
To abandon its slough
of crab’s carapace, rot-soft timber,
Fragments of nets and untenanted shells,
Its hushed whispers sip the air
It scents with kelp and wrack,
Salt and its iron-eating corrosiveness.
A constant we can rely on.
More durable than the stone it polishes
To an ultimate detritus.
Our womb, our primeval cradle:
But a bad enemy
When its groin cracking mass
Heaves sullenly in its bilious depths,
And at night we can hear it
Sulkily rushing towards us.
We trust it to absorb our poisons,
An insult it will repay when it outwears us.
Page(s) 68
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