Elegy for a living sea

‘The ocean is a heartbeat,’ she says,
the two of us by a tide pool –    

green moss and molluscs, 
fishflit and side-eye crabs, 
sleeping anemones and surf 
grabbing at the flat rock shelf,
gulls wheeling and keening.

She, nearly ten, starts to cry,
the future for her a rise and rise
of tide and heat, of bottle caps and plastic wrap,
of clag and choke and storm and scraps.

The ocean is a pulse 
stuttering, a beat  
bleating, a wave fractured and flat                      lining 

(I know,                   my love,                               I know). 

The ocean is a heartbeat   

(let us place the ocean to our ear, repenting)

The ocean is a heartbeat  

(let us lay our hands on the ocean, reviving)

The ocean is a heart beat —