Riverside

by Sarah Westcott

Riverside

little bones
on the shore,
clay pipes, egg sacs, crockery

bones laid out like runes

and the children dreaming
deeper into their,
deeper into their -

something
out there in the waving

surfaces
stitched with light,
something coming forward, retreating -

Judge's Comments - Martin Malone

This poem was on my shortlist from very early on. It has real movement and a graceful development throughout, towards that last clinching stanza. The pacing and rhythm cleverly mimics the poems movement from the solidity of the seashore with its ephemeral detritus to the more fluid ebb-and-flow of the sea 'stitched with light'. Marvellous.