Hesketh Marshes poem

This is based on my previous post about walking down the Hesketh marshes following the River Ribble as it nears the sea, and the resulting comments from my post.

Thanks to those who will recognise their own words and thoughts used with some license from me.

Man is baffled to find a use

But reluctant to ignore.

Green looks grey as seen through gauze.

Walkers on these bleak estuarine urban fringes

Remember Magwitch and more haunted Kentish marsh. 

Damp sticky, and chill, and lonely levée.

Trodding above tide line - drifted sticks and plastic,

And logs, and odd wrecked shoes, and bladder seaweed,

And rope abandoned, and the odd dead fish,

And planks and wooden beams

With hints of erstwhile trouble out at sea.

After. My photos confirm the gloom.

I write and show and readers say d’accord,

Except for one remembering the same

Without the gauze, now blazing sun,

And finding beneath a rare defiant tree

Welcome shade to munch her lunch

And eager,

Celebrating her chance to use

This expanded open scape.