Boundaries
Slipping between acidic
and calcareous, crossing
the divide of counties
between childhood and now.
Black podsols below the acid mor
leached horizons delving deeper
than my tiny layers of accumulations.
A young scale of existence
wildly different from its own.
From there tipping westward
to rolling shoulders
of belly blanched landform.
Holding round backed echoes
of sea creatures, wraithes
compressed forever
in sheaves of silty rock.
Sharing breathing space
with tumuli, barrows and forts
buried flinty hard-core nodules
a portal to past lives
dissolving and revealing.
And always the restless sea.
A mismatch in the compass
of deep time and deposits
of memory, imagined long gone
still held strong in strata.
Rachel Tennant is a poet, artist and photographer with a professional background in landscape architecture. Rachel’s work is influenced by people and their place in the natural environment.
Blog: rmt-images.co.uk/rmt-blog