|
|
 |
Morcambe Bay February 2004
Posted: 08 February 2004
Word Count: 145
Summary: Tragedies like this shouldn't be forgotten. This is only based on the event, as I don't know the full facts of the story.
|
Font Size
|
|
Morecambe Bay February 2004
Nobody knows when tidal waves
will come or leave, they say.
So keep away from the beach at night,
down on Cockleshell Bay.
When strangers came and saw the shells
and saw the seaweed sway,
they sent their gangs to dig the sands
down on Cockleshell Bay.
Strong winds roared, and heavy rain
had fallen all that day,
‘til evening came and darkness fell
down on Cockleshell Bay.
Who knows what thoughts ran through their minds
as the sea shone silver and grey,
and flooded across the sandy plain
down on Cockleshell Bay.
Their anguished cries rose to the sky
as they tried to run away.
But the floodtide covered them all too soon
down on Cockleshell Bay.
The nineteen swollen bodies
bring fear to those who stay
to lift them up from out of the tide,
down on Cockleshell Bay.
|
Comments by other Members
| |
 miffle at 16:43 on 08 February 2004
 Report this post
|
Kathleen -
I agree with you and am glad that you have written this poem even though, like most of us, you do not have the facts at your fingertips.
'down on Cockleshell Bay' sounds so innocent out of context doesn't it (!?) almost like an idea for a children's story...And I thought the poem, too, in its simplicity, read a little like a children's poem and that this made it all the more powerful.
Nikki :-)
| |
 Dee at 16:57 on 08 February 2004
Report this post
|
Kathleen,
Thank you for writing this. I know Morecambe Bay well and would, in fact, have been there on Friday if the car hadn’t started playing up. The novel I have been working on for the past year is set in the spot where those people drowned. It looks such an innocuous place and yet it is incredibly dangerous. That is part of its fascination for me. When the tide comes in there it creeps up slowly until it reaches a certain point and then it’s like flushing a toilet. The sea rushes in at strange angles and incredible speeds.
Of course, the politics of why they were out there, doing what they were doing is yet another tragedy. They will not be the last.
I wish I could write a poem for them.
Dee
| |
Jumbo at 16:59 on 08 February 2004
Report this post
|
Kathleen
I found this quite moving! It had the sound of sea shanty or a folk song somewhere in the background. I kept wanting to hear it sung (I hope that you don't take that as a criticism; it's not meant to be!)
Best wishes
John
| |
Account Closed at 21:52 on 08 February 2004
Report this post
|
I agree with John, my first thought was that it is reminiscent of a folk song, due to the nice repetitive verse ending and because it's the kind of topic for such songs. It might have been written a 100 years ago. (Again, not meant as criticism - I like it!)
Steve
| |
poemsgalore at 18:12 on 09 February 2004
Report this post
|
Thank you all very much, I was hoping it would come across as sounding like an innocent place and rather child like, so I take all your comments as compliments. I rather like the idea of it sounding like a sea shanty too. Terrible events can seem all the more so when treated simply. xxx
| |
roovacrag at 19:34 on 09 February 2004
Report this post
|
Very well done and with a TV program in aid of this tragedy You did well. These people should be stopped now before others are killed.xxAlice
| |
 James Graham at 11:11 on 10 February 2004
Report this post
|
You must have written this very quickly, soon after the news of that tragedy. It's like a folk-song or ballad, and I imagine that's just the way folk-songs might have been written in the past, soon after the event. And like a folk-song, it puts a recent terrible event into a verse form which sort of crystallises it. I'm always impressed with your rhyming - here everything rhymes with 'bay' without any of the rhymes seeming forced. And your language is like the language of ballads - simple, plain language like 'Strong winds roared, and heavy rain/Had fallen all that day' - lines that don't 'sex up' (to use a popular expression nowadays) the event, or dramatise it with a lot of lurid imagery, but let it speak for itself.
As for the full facts of the story, these deaths raise so many issues - not just the 'Snakeheads' but the whole murky end of the way our food is produced and distributed. Slave labour in West Africa, on cocoa plantations. The supermakets' constant drive to get stuff as cheaply as possible. But that's not the business of the poem, which is a different kind of response just as necessary as the political one.
James.
|
|
| |
Richardwest at 15:17 on 11 February 2004
Report this post
|
Kathleen -- on a personal note, this poem resonated with me because Morecambe's where I grew up and the Bay is a place I know only too well. What happened last week was simple souls getting caught in a complex trap (and I don't just mean the tidal flow). Your words speak to that simplicity, and because of the studied absence of affectation are all the more affecting. Obviously this is heartfelt little piece. Obviously you care. Thanks, then, for saying what so many of us think.
'Best -- Richard
| |
|
|
| |
Comments by other Members
