E coli colonies
And clusters of blisters
Pink clusters of blisters
And scabs and lice
Do they taste good your cockles?
Do they feel satisfies your mussels?
Do you feel alive, alive, oh?
Candid she is ah
The women of the water
Of beds of sand burrowed deep
Shadows under rocks
On the corners of streets
A parasitic mass
Not the proverbial grain of sand
A fluid called nacre
Or mother of pearl is
Deposited
Layer upon layer
Until a pearl
Is formed
The product of an irritant
A cluster of blisters
Opalescent blisters
Sweet pink satisfaction in
The labial palp
The entrance way to the mouth

‘I’m so cold and I’m so scared
And I’m so alone’


I just
So, a pearl fisher needs to wear waders
There’s no dignified way to put on waders
And when it gets cold you have to **** yourself to keep warm
You also need a set of tangs
Mine are hazel
I got them from the wood
I cut it down but first I asked the tree if it was okay
The tree is part of the river too you see
It nourishes the peat
That filters the water that
Drips back into the river
That is filtered by the mussel
That the salmon and trout swim in
Then the mussel
The larvae attached to the salmon and the trout
And it forms a symbiotic relationship
Where the mussel filters the water and
The salmon and the trout
Spread their offspring
The way you can tell the difference
Between a male and a female mussel
Is that when you pick up a male it's
Literally dripping in *****
A constant *******
The females all spawn at the same time
A mussel is an indicator species,
Which in ecological terms means
That it is a species that will
Be
The perfect indicator of the health
Of the river
The other things you need are
A river speculum
I haven’t made mine yet
But we used plastic ones
With glass cut to shape
But it enables you to see the river
The secret part of the secret river
It’s red down there
And it’s cold
The women of the water
They hide in the shadows under rocks
And burrowed deep
They can move very slowly across the river
Bed
A colony of mussels
A family
When you find mussels
When you f
When you find a beautiful
When you find lots of them it’s
Called a
Good crook and this is where
You’ll find pearls
If you ask me the man who takes them is a good crook himself
Bad crook
And it’s I’m looking at it now and I can see
It with the moonlight on it
And it just it
Keeps going
But it’s tidal here it’s not fresh
I’d have to distil it myself
With copper pipes
Copper tubes
Copper coil
When copper ages it turns blue
And you don’t weld copper
You braze it
Soldering at a high temperature
A Heat
Mussels can live up to 150 years old
I held a 120-year-old one
And it was so wise and venerable
I didn’t know what to do
I couldn’t speak
This mussel
She was alone
Down there in the red
The angry red water
She lived through
WW1 and 2
And women’s suffrage
My grandmother was alive two
I wore silk because it’s pure
And women are supposed to be pure
Don’t know
Freshwater nymphs
I can see it right now
And it’s just like little tiny mirrors
Little tiny mirrors that are reflecting light back
Speculum is the Latin for mirror
Maybe the water’s a mirror
But it’s tidal here so I’d have to distil it
Saltwater mirrors
Saltwater speculums
Spectators of atrocity
And mussels they grow
With annual rings
Annually
They reach maturity around the
Age of 30
Like tree trunks
Like the hazel
That helps me to keep them
Catch them in its tangs
But I want to protect them
I am one

Little plaster shells
But I cracked one
And it wasn’t plaster
Split her in half
Not with tongs
With silicone
Pink flexible
Gooey silicone
Their linings bleed every month

It was a dark orange
Red colour
Because of the peat that was draining into the water

But I have to protect them
Cause I am one.

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
     And the mussel pooled and the heron
               Priested shore
          The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
          Myself to set foot
               That second
     In the still sleeping town and set forth.

     My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
     Above the farms and the white horses
               And I rose
          In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
          Over the border
               And the gates
     Of the town closed as the town awoke.

     A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
     Blackbirds and the sun of October
               Summery
          On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
          To the rain wringing
               Wind blow cold
     In the wood faraway under me.

     Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
     With its horns through mist and the castle
               Brown as owls
          But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
          There could I marvel
               My birthday
     Away but the weather turned around.

     It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
     Streamed again a wonder of summer
               With apples
          Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
          Through the parables
               Of sun light
     And the legends of the green chapels

     And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
     These were the woods the river and sea
               Where a boy
          In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
          And the mystery
               Sang alive
     Still in the water and singingbirds.

     And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
     Joy of the long dead child sang burning
               In the sun.
          It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
          O may my heart's truth
               Still be sung
     On this high hill in a year's turning.