Freshwater West
After three years of developing as larvae, adult glow-worms
live for only 8 or 9 days. Females attract a mate by emitting a light
from luminous organs on the underside of their tail segments.
In the burrows the sea is hushed
under a tinnitus of crickets
the occasional snap-thump, grey-black.
In the dense willow thicket
a crunch of snails, sea-spurge.
The thin moon is a hairline crack.
Paths in the marram grass
are the manic criss-crosses
of lost souls. There are holes
large enough for small corpses.
Four names are marked in the sand.
The rib-cage of a bird.
Looking till half-blind –
but not a segment
not a spark, not a pinprick
of light in the shadows
where the sea meets the dark.
Then, driving home on midnight roads
everything glows: white crates, lamp-posts,
vans in driveways… and beyond the ridge
white floodlights on the oil refinery.
A Las Vegas of glow-worms!