Cross-stitch, back-stitch, chainstitch, hem –
lines stitch together where flatness
eventually corrugates to sand hills
through a patchwork of waterways and marsh
before hours of dark open fistfuls of stars.
From two small Burnhams
with lines full of spirit, layer upon layer
are deeply embedded in my body
and mind, the weave so heavy.
The map is flat although it’s partly sea.
I no longer jump through sunlight
from marram-grassed dunes.
We’re scared of waves engulfing us
and the world is running out of sand.
Great views from the top, boasts the Coastliner –
wrinkles that furrow my face
intricately woven, through cockle bights,
Deadman’s Hole, Butchers Beach, the Nod.
My place is Overy (over-the-water), estuary
to the Burn. Map-lines entangle me
from Scolt Head Island into sea, lips through which tides
spit and gargle, metallic lips edged in sand.
This tiny harbour village has its myths,
the Island full of noises, terns, ring plover,
it’s like a thousand … instruments, kree-er,
yodelling t’lew, t’lew, persistent pic-a-pic.
Oyster-catchers congregate and nest.
There were three of us when we first came.
How tall you’ve grown. Half-fare, remember,
bend your knees and they won’t see.
Lines begged us to swim – a little death,
and half sea-swallowed, we’d leap from
gun-metal, marram-clad dunes.
Another step stitches round the lips
like a necklace of ripples on the strand.
Percussion beckons me to dance, mapping
the future, inhabiting a different space each time.
The map’s strewn with razors, tellinas, oysters, gapers, clams.
Wild rugosas, are they still there? I’m a dancing poet now,
choreographing creeks, an ancient woman of this land.
