The sea slides out
on morning ebb tide.
The cleft is left smiling,
fertile with slimy life.
Spirals and ovals
of primaeval petrified shells
make mystifying marks.
To welcome or repel?
Coalesced
with twinkling cousins
on the Carboniferous rocks:
limpet, whelk
and periwinkle.
I penetrate
the folded, faulted fissure,
assaulted by the miasma
of salt and secretions.
Slipping on storm-loosed kelp
and lifeless purple laver.
In the dank chamber
wild one-eyed jelly-beasts
are meshed
with shells of every shape.
Prawns glide in infested pools.
Anaemic shore crabs scutter
amidst unstirred anemones,
and rank bladder wrack.
Nature’s paradigm:
stressed flesh resting
in this dry, hostile slit.
Between water and air
Biding time. Alive.
Waiting to be revived
when the climbing moon
draws the sea-cover over.
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