MARAZION: LOOKING AT THE SEAFRONT...

Marazion: Looking At The Seafront…

Harsh rocks, strewn like traps,

Disguised by strands of thick brown weed

Litter the skirts of St Michael’s Mount,

Poked at and prodded and pieced through gaps

By oystercatchers’, egrets’ and curlews’ greed

And too many skirmishing gulls to count…

A myriad pebbles, like shrapnel spewed,

Deposited and grounded by the continuous tide

Lie upon gritty, saturated sand,

Forming a crunchy pattern, constantly

Plucked at and pummelled and pounded aside, 

In loose formation, huddled they stand…

And then the sea roars in its next angry tide

To camouflage the blemishes, the food sources and dangers to hide;

And with each surge, the ocean pushes

The thick, brown weed to form a defensive wall,

Its flies, its stink, its grotesqueness all designed to appal…

Pete Ray

December 2019

The incredible manner in which the Mounts Bay tide covers a multitude of ugly scenes: the ragged rocks around the Mount, the unsightly weed in which waders pick around and also the formations of weathered stones higher up the beach and the thick, slimy, slick and pungent brown weed which in some places builds a metre high wall…

Contrasts…