Salt Marsh Survivors Poem by C Richard Miles

Turning tides reveal mysteries of moist marsh,
As salt creek’s crazy-paving parquet surfaces,
When brackish brine seeps and slurps seawards,
Revealing seemingly lifeless deserts of dearth.
Marooned in the mouldering mudbank’s mire,
Flounder five-fingered starfish, stolid survivors
Of attack from glaucous gulls wheeling overhead
In quest of cheap offerings of unworldly worth.

Tantalised by wriggling titbits tendered to them,
Seagulls scream and squabble in early excitement,
Stealing the riches of the saltmarsh from the grasp
Of the gloopy, saturated, sucking, saline earth.
Whilst sunbathing, stranded on the new, exposed shore,
Squads of seals quibble and fight over disputed territory
Overlooked proprietorially by the head, alpha bull
Gathering his veilless harem in awe of his great girth.

Writhing lugworms lift lugubrious, heedful heads
From the gluey gunge, peering for a mere moment
Then retract rapidly, ruefully for fear of gruesome fate
Which hovers high above them: feathered, grey death.
Sea holly, sea aster, sea lavender and sea rocket mock
In bright mimicry of their lazy, landbound relatives
As they wave, vegetative echoes of fast-retreating sea,
Simpering in the receding distance under its breath.

Residues of storm-ripped wrack and sea lettuce
Slop in the sludge of the turbid creek bottom
Gnawed away by hungry helical sea-snails,
Who feast on salad unprepared by any chef.
Ragworms spit out unwanted, discarded debris
Sifted from the phytoplankton-bearing sediment
In elegantly wound, tight-turbaned spirals
Resembling the curlicue of a briny bass clef.

Mudskippers, primeval throwbacks to the first
Landlubbers, haul themselves ashore and crawl
Leglessly, yet stout-fin limbed, escaping captives
From sea-prison’s grip, though endangering their health.
As scorching warmth wreaks desiccating havoc,
Tired, they flail and flop back for vital rehydration,
Archetypes of amphibians, but still fully fishlike,
Opportunistic optimists of swampy stealth.

Salt-sheep soon sicken of scavenging for fescue
And come to crop coarse, self-seasoning forage
On the hummocks and tussocks of serrated sedge
And sea-pinks, no thrift for them in their wealth.
Cowering crayfish quiver in khaki camouflage
From hunting herring-gulls scouting for prey,
Till obscurity returns as rapid, incoming waters
Submerge, so all marsh-folk secure safety itself.