Tuesday: The Strandline

-John Hawkhead

Along the Strandline

Bare feet squelch furtively,
lungs gag at weeds
fermenting, lamenting.
Foraging for sea soft glass
in amongst deserted
debris, snickered at, avoided.
A milky thread laces
slippery orange,
hesitant fingers pincer,
easing away gunk,
held up to the solitary sun
a string of forgotten pearls.

-Anna Chorlton

The port of the bog

Its purpose, woven
across the landscape.
East Strand, a beach of shells:
mussels and clams. Cast overboard,
washed up; stranded.
Above the high tide line
lobster pot pyramids.

Stone walls, pincushion
bleached-wood net needles,
colourful markers, buoys
and floats, decorate gardens.
Lawns quilted by drying nets.
The harbour seal, circles,
disturbs oily rainbows.

Ebb and flow history, the rise
and fall of quotas, trawlers
trailed to bog-land. Burnt.
Those who remember
and those who don’t.

-Gaynor Kane

-Rachael Ikins

Not Quite Low Enough

High tide’s
strand line mostly
dried eelgrass where you stand
near the lighthouse; the blue herons
aren’t here.

-Elly Nobbs

gentle breeze
in her wet tangled hair
the ocean smell

~ Christina Chin
The Haiku Foundation
Photo Teresa Cobb

Stranded

The bandstand by the strandline
rocks. I dive to salvage
the wreckage of what you have been
saying between the sips of pale ale.

In the part we don’t see sand often,
yet my ears seem to be filled with
the golden grains. The local pickpocket
returns my perpetual empty wallet.

The bandstand now play Good Vibrations.
I love the colourful clothes. Sunlight fiddles
with things premonition proclaims
as soon to be lost. We are white noise.

In buzzing flickers the image of the strandline
stares at the dead whale drifting this way.
……………………
……………………
Three Dead Lines
.
days stroll by strandlines

the misplaced swab test result
and town-lanes emptied

-Kushal Poddar