Mile upon square mile of salt marshland,
spread low on the horizon of a huge East Anglian sky
that whiles away the winter's afternoon,
until the wildfowl, all as one, take wing.
To brackish creeks they're flown, gone home to roost,
their foraging completed on the greasy, grey mud flats,
interlaced with winding ditches deep and dark,
where last of tidal water ebbs to sea.
Crepuscular, beneath the risen moon, the tide returns,
and salt sea water rises, rippleless
straightening ditches, scoured by earlier ebb,
drowning deep the gleaming grey in glassy black.
Sliding sinuously, this silent, swelling serpent,
saturates the maze of salt marsh creeks
almost to the brim, by risen reed beds
where roosting wildfowl float in fitful sleep.
Later, in the west, the moon sets low,
sucked, from her hide and seek amongst the clouds,
down to the glutinous oblivion of the marsh.
The darkest hour is come, before the winter sun
spreads silver on the eastern sky,
awakening the wildfowl flocks to greet the dawn
with raucous, squawked cacophony,
before their beating wings bear them aloft,
a dwindling skein that wheels
above black water, once more on the ebb.
Both birds and water bound for mud flat feeding ground
now lain again exposed, abandoned by the tide.
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Author Notes
East Anglia is not the only place in the UK where salt marshland can be found, but it is probably the most extensive. From the northern banks of the Thames Estuary along the eastern coasts of Essex, Suffolk and the greater part of Norfolk, with a few breaks of higher ground, these low lying, virtually at sea level, tracts of marsh extend sometimes several miles inland. Then again in the fen country around The Wash there is more of the same. The area has attracted artists since landscape painting came into vogue, but in the main it is not the land but the skies that they come to paint.
This marshland is lonely country, mainly the province of wildfowl. There are few trees; the vegetation consisting mainly of reeds and grasses with an edible marginal, samphire, growing closer to the sea.
The poem is free form relying for its poesy on anything and everything except for tail end rhyme. This confusion of devices reflects the confusion of the tidal creeks that insinuate themselves around the marshlands.
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