Shingle
In time, he became shingle, spent his days
shifting up the coast, piling quietly into the river mouth,
buggering up the Harbour channel.
Hulls of ships grated on bewildered tides,
tankers grounded between groynes.
Deep in the swirling current, he bubbled with stories
blacker and funnier than hell.
Words rose in a jumble of fish-eye worlds, breaking
the surface, its choppy brine dipped by gulls and terns.
His eyes glimmered skyward, blue flint.
The dredgers came for him on a regular basis,
ferried him home in a convoy of trucks along the coast
where she waited, dominating the skyline
all the way to Pett, the sun in her eyes,
thrift and eyebright in her fractured heart.
When he died, they buried him at sea, rapt
in a dream woven from the palest light, the light
of solitude, when the sun lies long across the sound
and it’s just you, the lonely call of curlews,
and pebbles rattling with the tide.
Jane Lovell won the Flambard Prize in 2015 and has been shortlisted for several awards including the Basil Bunting Prize, the Robert Graves Prize and Periplum Book Award. She has been published by Against the Grain Press and Coast to Coast to Coast. This Tilting Earth is to be published by Seren in Spring 2019. Jane also writes for Elementum Journal.