Samphire Picking

You can find it by the shoes –

neatly placed pairings perched atop tidal-wall rocks

socks poking out

a peppering of sand on their soles

– that wait

in irregular rows

for the barefoot harvest to end

This place is for toes

Freed flesh knows its way around

Cool clay oozes

under hot, heavy feet

smoothing itself into arches

pointing the cracks of heels

A field of lower-legs, backs bent into inverted 'U's

fingertip-grazing

Here, we say sam-fuh

flat-vowelled, like the sand

A handful teased free

shaken clean at its spider-leg roots

stings the lips

stains them blushed, fit to bleed

Candle-wax flesh

on the shallow groove of your tongue

turning sun and sea into one;

salted honey.

(Part of the collection 'Every Day Is Like Sunday' about growing up in a British seaside town.)