The Sea Empress
written by: hedgehog
June the beach a jumbled mass of jetsam
Pearl riverlets adorn the sand sliding back
Towards the long abandoned weather hut
Footsteps through time had shaped this path
Seeds broadcast on the wind piloted here
Thrift, Sea Kale and Elijah Blue Grass flourish
Clinging to the slopes that lead up to Marram Grass
Consuming the dunes with roots that bind
Winter gales shaped this comfortless bay
Summer visitors never mark time here
As a solitary fox slinks past ever looking
Rabbits bolt to nearby burrows safer now
Everywhere reminders of another life
Perched on the cliff face far behind
My father’s house of stone, my house now
Extracted from this bleak and dismal bay
Looking out across this black track-marked bay
The Sea Empress split apart, disconnected
Each tide bleak, blacker than the last
Wave upon wave a procession of the dead
This turbid ebb and flow that greets me now
Where the sea meets this oil black sand
Deaths shadows left on this weathered shore
Through time will vanish and nature restore
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
The Sea Empress grounded in Pembroke in 1996 causing an ecological disaster with the loss of hundreds of sea birds.
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