Salt Poem by cahen thrips

a silent marsh, save a curlew's call
above the bawl of distant geese; salt
water's seep or creep so slow a fall
scarcely seen other than in a gleam of
dawn on a mud-slick beaching creek.
Grass is wet; my feet are damp as I
skirt the sea wall, hands in pockets
against sting of frost, head bowed
not before the wind but because that's
how I walk now, lost within a new me -
the new me without...

...and a pale ghost
lifts from a soke-dyke, wheels on lazy
egret wings, sets once more as if to haunt...

they say for every death there's a bird;
I thought yours was the tawny owl
which cries at night but maybe it's the
egret that also cries by day. Is that your
voice piping on a heedless wind, or
just another curlew's sorrowful mewl?

I turn: but I'm on my own and now cold
air is prickling at my briny eyes -
so my horizon blurs.
December 2022