We trawl for the talismans of time-travel
along pewter shores and craggy pools
Our six-year-old selves caught
in bowls of brine, mirrors to ripple
our reflections outwards
Your red wellies a sudden thrill
against the lash of rock, salted in mist
your edges beginning to soften
But you are too far out
Ever searching for the ridged whorls
of ancestry. The present haunting and hunting
the past. There was always a why
in your mouth back then
We dream of soothing the indentations -
reading the braille of the Jurassic. Lineage we can trace
to the curve of our spines, cochlear, the guppy entities
we were
in our unknown mother’s caul. The ache to find the origins
so raw in our bones. But you are too far out
when you call - Come! I’ve found one -
a benediction bouncing through
the cloying haze
I see you, twenty years out
a diminutive hologram projected
onto the billowed canvas of mist stitching sea and sky
together. Your tubby fingers clasp
the shale-stored nostalgia of a creature, held
high but you are too far out. I watch you
blurring into insubstantiality, a chalky outline clasping the beginning
of an answer. But you were too far out. I could only watch
you dissolve. The we becoming I. Your red wellies -
fossilised ghosts in my memory
