Coastline

This is the landscape of the Cambrian age:
shale, blue quartz, planes of slate streaked with
iron and lead; soapstone, spars of calcite;
in these pools, fish are the colour of sand,
velvet crabs like weeds, prawns transparent as water.

This shore was here before man. Every tide
the sea returns, and floats the bladderwrack.
The flower animals swell and close over creatures
...