Sarah James
INSIGNIFICANT A million grains of sand ridge to the wind’s tugs smoothed by the tide’s edge and ebb slipping through an hourglass of narrowed gravity Molecules of ocean shoaled through blues whipped to rip currents rock-hammered surf-surged towards drying then rising to flock as cumuli and nimbus On the cliff a tree’s tangled roots exposed Rain dangling A leaf mosaic trodden to mulch Roughed-up twigs buried deep in a nesting bird’s weave The skeleton tree’s twin a shadow on stubbed grass each blade sifted by the coastal air that clatters the shoreline’s pattern of brine pebbles and nudges a feather to fall towards my hand It doesn’t land within grasp yet the restless sand and weathered motion hold together each insignificant strand |
insignificant weathered motion within grasp my hand nudges brine shoreline coastal air sifted shadow weave deep mulch dangling tangle cumuli rising towards rip shoaled narrowed slipping edge smoothed ridge |
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LIVING WITH SALT
“And the River Salwarpe throws up brine.”
A Worcestershire saying of unknown origin.
The beach that buried Sabrina’s pearls
rolled her stone marbles,
froth in place of pretty dresses
and necklaces of bladderwracked surf.
Grey waves rushed against breakers
taught her to speak with a mouthful of sea,
showed her words and worlds
may be shaken from soundness.
Outcast by her own brief leaving,
her return tossed back to rock headlands
until a glint of granite hooked her;
eyes dulled from sea glass to dead lichen.
Claiming the rivers, she surged upstream:
from the Wye to the Lugg, the Monnow and Trothy;
she took to the Tarennig in hope of her source.
The lack of salt near killed her.
She settled instead at Salinae:
the town brine wells dried to scabs
but still doused in a mineral strength.
Centuries layered into her skin.
“And the River Salwarpe throws up brine.”
A Worcestershire saying of unknown origin.
The beach that buried Sabrina’s pearls
rolled her stone marbles,
froth in place of pretty dresses
and necklaces of bladderwracked surf.
Grey waves rushed against breakers
taught her to speak with a mouthful of sea,
showed her words and worlds
may be shaken from soundness.
Outcast by her own brief leaving,
her return tossed back to rock headlands
until a glint of granite hooked her;
eyes dulled from sea glass to dead lichen.
Claiming the rivers, she surged upstream:
from the Wye to the Lugg, the Monnow and Trothy;
she took to the Tarennig in hope of her source.
The lack of salt near killed her.
She settled instead at Salinae:
the town brine wells dried to scabs
but still doused in a mineral strength.
Centuries layered into her skin.
- Sabrina was the Celtic goddess of the River Severn
Copyright © Sarah James 2016
Sarah James is a poet, former journalist and occasional fiction writer, playwright and photographer. Her latest collections are plenty-fish (Nine Arches Press 2015) and The Magnetic Diaries (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press 2015), which was highly commended in the Forward Prizes, and a poetry-play version staged at The Courtyard, Hereford. Winner of this year’s Overton Poetry Prize, the pamphlet-length sequence Lampshades and Glass Rivers is forthcoming from Loughborough University’s Lamplight Press.
