Low Tide
Her litany of lost things:
fragmented crab,
shell shattered to nothing.
Christ in porcelain:
a child kept in her pocket
that she felt
each time she wavered.
She remembers them
as a siren song.
Once,
the bloated body of a gull
decaying in the sudden slope of green.
Once,
a convict heart
netted in sea-rubble,
blood-beat crawling –
rather be in the belly of marsh mud
than loved.
Rather be scarred against the scrub of sand.
Rather be waiting
in the poised claw of night
for the sirens to stop.
Catherine Faulkner lives in the Highlands. Her poetry has been published in The Wilfred Owen Assoc. Journal, Celebrating Change, Shared Stories Cairngorms, Severine and Gingerbread House.