(1 January 2009)
a living of sorts to the antique
salt-pans that fringe the littoral.
She turns an unshed ocean
of tears – this corrosive
suspension of grief – into the
possibility of renewal. It's an
archaeology of the stricken
heart. There's life everywhere, you
just can't see it. Around the rusted
sluice gates of the disused clos de
poissons, crabs scuttle from sight and
shrimps jet away from our
shadows. I don't blame them—
there is risk here in the splash
zone. Turnstones scurry and
turn worms before the waves,
stilts and avocets pick their tiny
prey from the shallow lagoons and little
terns flutter and dive the deeper
pools for fish. Further along
the shore, a freighter's skeleton, wrecked
in a rocky cove and cargo long
picked clean, hides a city of limpets
and barnacles. This is no place for fragile
life to show itself to the sun. Still,
she lets me in a little more with every
rising tide. Controlled, carefully
watching, in her hunt for life she
harvests joy from our shared sorrow.
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Loss
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Poised
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