26. Their Feet

Where their feet have made a path
along the tide’s high-water mark
a million tiny crab shells, bleaching white
and brittle, an unending line
are mixed with vegetation, coastal wrack.
And here and there, along this path
the small grey birds will make themselves
conspicuous, to ward us off.
Sea wormwood and lavender are flowering now
and cloak the drying marsh, its muddy channels
shrunk and crazed
beneath the summer sun that’s beating down on
footprints pressed into its crusted skin by migrant birds.
And beneath the buffet of the breeze across our ears
a deeper sound, from out beyond the dunes
of wave-break over flint shingle; glinting sands.