Coming home, now, to the Grey Mother, through fields where the colours are a smudged chalk board, the faded pink of seeding rosebay translated into white tufts that cloud the vision. Until the drama of the seascape sharpens the focus, with its parallel bands of sky, ultramarine, gold, the horizon drawn with a steady hand in indigo marker pen.
Mother is wearing her very best blue dress, shades of aquamarine, of melt, of French navy, of teal. She takes me back, draws me in to her cool, treacherous depths, lets me climb into her like an awkward pinniped, a selkie who has spent too long in her human skin. In and out of my element, pulled away from my comfort zone, until I can bear it no longer, and struggle back against the pull of her reproaches.
Beached. The dunlins skim her wrinkled skin, like flying fish, synchronised, all of a flock. Seedheads among the dunes, little skulls which hoard the promise of another year until the moment comes to let go. Let go.
