12.

				    Drifting cloud in a clear twilight sky, 
from the Port Talbot smokestack — 
			           tainted pink, purple.... 

        Red spot organelle
	                  alive with light-sensitive crystals in the Euglena, 
		   lovely unicellular stranger, wriggling in the All Sea; 
red spot, proto-eye,
	   turning the turning body towards the sun, separating 
									      light from dark: 
	     proto-Eros, hatched from the moon, a light 
			in the dark — predicting day and night — prophet 
		of the coming photo-pigment, 
							  horseshoe crab’s vision...
 
       Kemp’s ridley sea turtle sights a crab, blue against sand: black eyes 					             		
                illuminate blue claw; blue claw illuminates black eyes
						
				 to see...to see...is to appear...
				 
    Half-charred cardboard box lies next to a black plastic bag of clothes, 				                      	 	            
        		       waiting for tonight’s fire to finish it off. Sand
              	        skitters over sand, sound 
                               			         of the turning earth. Steelworks
smoke drifts, purple, black...
		          All these dead I’m hunting, the extinct, still hungry —

         snouts, beaks, hands (nameless miner’s hands, chipping stone) — 

   drift in and out of dream, the body’s night language, 
	  	      a stream of sepulchre-words, lighting all our cells. Fire
          from the flare-stack intensifies as the grey light wanes.

                      	    A match to the eye: beautiful flame. 

Christien Gholson  | Tidal Flats 13
Contents | Mudlark No. 63 (2017)