On Morecambe Bay

Unsplash: Owen le Roux

When the water recedes
I can walk out on the silt plains
Revealed newly
Each day
With the pull of the moon,

A vast and sudden landscape
Exposed from underneath
The estuary.

At this hour
The light ebbs from the sky
And drains away over the horizon.

Neither land nor sea,
This place is never still.
Here constantly

Returns and retreats
To show where thin streams
Carve valleys
Into the silky, brown sand.

Standing on the firm silt
Is the gap between being and nothing,
Our island and its edge.

I will have to give back
The shining unground beneath
My feet: the sea is quick to reclaim.

Those who delay
Will find the salt wash around their ankles,
The suction
Of moveable ground,
The swallowing force of standing in a plughole.
They will find that
The sea is quick to reclaim.