Saundersfoot
Anticline – an arch or upfold in rocks, generally produced by the
bending upwards of rock beds under pressure from the sides.
He’s bowing to her all the way from the harbour
head down, eyes lowered, every pace along the beach
bending to a shell to smell its scent, then casting it off
if it’s not divine enough.
She is still relatively young,
though pressured on all sides
forced to bend and arch.
Those that lay on her have gone,
and she is stiff as whalebone.
He moves in slow silence until he picks a yellow cone shell,
still glistening. He sniffs it, flicks his tongue to taste its ridges,
feels with large fingers the tiny aperture, the shiny liplike columella,
then he strides to Lady Cave Anticline.
She has never had such a visitor.
All others have gawped at her broken spine,
tossed theories like a ball
measured, scraped,
talked about her.
He gently rubs a small hole into her tight, stressed folds,
makes such exquisite strokes the weight of millennia eases.
He pushes in the yellow shell, slightly hidden. Whispers.
Then walks towards the headland and disappears.