Standing In The North Sea Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Standing in the North Sea
The weight of water grips my calves
It's an icy anklet, a chilly shackle

Dropping a look I see
Two stumps the colour of pig's lard
The ghastly pallor of steamed octopus

I feel like the top of a mangrove tree
Surveying my varicose roots

The sand is a shifty floor
Continually sweeping itself
Sifting the hiss of shattered seashells
Like atomised lives, shapeless, reduced to nothing
In the greylag sea that grinds lives like a quern