Low tide

Grey seals are moaning in birth and birthing

late into the night where pups’ yellow pelts

dry with afterbirth while their fatty mothers

slipe in muddy sea bank, their ink pool eyes

full of a winter. It is a return year on year

to mate, to haul up sands with the heft of a mystery ―

giving birth on the very shore their mothers

gave them life within this salty grey.

Out in the Humber, boats lie flat at low tide: carry

again and again cargo of the world on their shoulders.