The Bay has unbuttoned itself again for me,
and what was water deep is now brown expanse
lying sodden, open to the sky, breathing as
mangroves with their thousand tiny breaths,
pneumatophores like an assembly of pins
fastening the mud to the cloth of the Bay.

Here the crabs are a slow militia of the
the seen and unseen, their sideways stalking
older than civilisations old and new,
and here the mud pops for me, ticking,
opening its many fluid mouths in rythmn,
each hole a sound explosion the tide will later seal.

The moon seen and unseen is pulling with its
cold pale body, moving in its waning and waxing
on its eight-fold path, sometimes gibbous,
shifting the water off the flats like a blanket
is drawn from a tired sleeping body, tenderly, utterly,
as the yachts tilt into their moorings and wait,
as the samphire absorbs its ration of salt,
as the Bar-tailed Godwits (Limosa lapponica),
stitch in the bubbling with their long needles,
taking what the withdrawal offers and are fed.

Twice each day the Bay forgets,
two times it remembers.
Nothing here is lost, only lent,
only taken out and carried back
on the long twine of the moon,
and I stand at the sand’s edge gazing,
smelling the mud, seeing the bubbling life,
taking in beauty and change as creature,
knowing the certainty of return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

19/08/2026