Quicksand

Quicksand
 --Nacton Shores--

On Sundays,
when shadows had lifted from my Mother
like a Victorian veil,
she'd pick me up, take me shoring.

We'd walk the long stiff length of Orwell.
I'd run off ahead -
hunting dead wood, dragon heads,
mermaids all dried out.

I'd observe traversing opportunities,
steep, eroding cliffs,
roots digging fingers
into earth for generations.

The tattered remains of jellyfish
often wedge within this sand,
become hunter's fodder.
and I, merciless,

would wade out, cane in hand,
not searching for pulse,
or to reunite matted beings
to the sea from which their born,

I went to prod, flip, lift then waft
at my biological home
attempting to evoke a slip of a mask,
a laugh echoing down river.

I remember the first experience
with thick, in-tide quicksand,
a boot became imaginary,
my height began at calf.

I'd squealed and pulled and flustered first,
her eyes flashed wide as snow globes,
unprepared for the natural chaos
of my mis-adventuring youth.

I'd never been her kind of wild, it never manifested.
I'd been melded something new,
something with violent vines,
wrapped around my throat.

There was a child opposite me, older,
who'd followed in keen interest.
The lad found himself somewhat submerged,
fighting with something blind -

He wept, and shivered, and called.
I didn't. I accepted fate, she'd seen me -
stared out, as if this certainty
was comforting.

She told us to wait, to become nothing,
as if a boulder left on river,
as if we never possessed breath.
His parents panicked.

I obediently followed, remained matter
until her hands found their ways to my armpits.
The shoe never returned,
the saturated sand claimed leather whole.

She removed the other boot,
after setting me down, slow and tender,
sighed as if parenting
hurt every vein and bone,

then escaped her own boots,
own coiled panic rested on London clay,
traced lines of volcanic ash,
charred with sharp, red fingernails.

I circled a mollusc,
buried in earth edge,
by half bitten ends,
as if I could chip it out alone.

We found bones that day, teeth, a jaw,
my familiar evaded existing again,
smoked, wandered on, mutually barefoot,
mutually stained in silt and silence

and I knew then I didn't fear drowning,
nor being trapped by force of nature.
It's the human element I claw from,
the feeling of imposition.

It's the emotions that sour me -
the understanding,
the wading through the weight
of other people's sorrow.

Often now I seek out marshes,
rivers banked in sand,
wander reeds with their warning signs
not to venture at high tide.