9.

       		  Singing Blake’s Sunflower at water’s edge, coaxing 
								      the tide in.

	                	   Grey clouds ride the sky-ceiling, vast shadows 
					skim the bay. Grey glint 
	        on a grey sea. Five minutes 
					of falling snow. Cold water
								                 rings

	                 Draw slight seaweed stink into the lungs. Particles 
 
				            resonate 
							           with ancestor cell-memory: 

Carboniferous scale tree roots 
			    feed off half-digested trunks, black bodies 
		of interlocking diamond-shaped leaves in black water, pulling 

			the dead’s black language up the notochord. A visceral music 
	       reaching narrow leaves, thin as grass, giant green 

bottle-brush swamp-moss orchestrating light’s silence. Chlorophyll 
						                        transmutation: 

      	   Light’s energy become night-flesh, night’s word: Eros 
             of leaf against leaf (sound birthed with touch). Light 

	  indivisible from indivisible snake-like scales, black diamonds 
							                    pressed into black shale

Christien Gholson  | Tidal Flats 10
Contents | Mudlark No. 63 (2017)