Holdfasts Poem by Giles Watson

Weed-flesh, wind-wracked, unbleeding
Clumped and kicked along the strand.
The stench and slickness of it;
Holdfasts clench like claws.

Encrustations craze them, salt caked,
Calcareous. Crabs scuttle, crustaceans
Jerk their joints within them. Stalkeyed,
Secretive; jostling for space.

You should have seen the storm
That wrenched them from rocks
Fathoms down, their forests
Of leathered leaves whirled

By ocean winds. Water
A flurry of whiteness, then
Browned by shreds of weed.

Lifted, cliff high, and dumped,
With shrimps - bug-eyed,
Planktonic, air-drowned
And spasmodic - the holdfasts,
Amputated from concretions,
Writhe in wind, like severed worms.

And all our glib presumptions
Wither with them: we too toil
To build on rock – and wind
And water ruin us.