Mud is loath to relinquish anything –
even in the name of science –
it will do so with a belch of methane
and black cloud in water.
The instruments are called ‘loggers’
and are adept at measuring tidal pressure,
water depth. They are embedded in marsh-
mud and anchored with weights.
You will need to retrieve them,
a minor favour in the interest of small fish.
The tide must be low. They are hidden
from the road behind salt bushes.
If you tread lightly the beads of glass wort
will bend but not break and the next tide
will hide where you have been.
When the first instrument comes into view,
do not remove it, but make a line of sight
with the telegraph pole on land –
it’s useful to walk backwards – continue
through deep mud towards open water.
In your peripheral view
you might notice a man in a car
driving slowly round the bay.
A white-faced heron may fly overhead
like a clattered warning.
At the tip of the tongue of the mud flat
the incoming tide is something in the mind
more than underfoot.
In the stillness the marsh has begun
the first of the day’s two breaths.
Mud responds with the lightest clicks of the tongue.
As you return the stranger in the car
will be waiting by the pole, an absence
of looseness in his arms. When he says
to look where he points it is a command.
The weights in your hand will grow heavier
and the channels will slowly widen
as he points to an arrow in the bank between you,
tells you that it took seventy pounds
of torque to his crossbow to make that arrow fly
six or seven hundred metres to its mark
from his home across the water. When he says
the strongest wind will not hamper its course,
his eyes do not leave yours.
When he talks about the marsh
beside which he has lived all his life –
it is as if he speaks of his mother,
or his grandmother – you will be struck
by the intimacy, his love of rhythms
and seasons and saltwater anomalies,
their softness and their intransigence. For now,
try not to think about the speed of the arrow,
the tension on the bow, a man marking a woman
across a bay. Remark aloud on the wonder
that an arrow could travel so far, so precisely.
Try to avoid his eye as he vents his hatred –
when he talks about ‘greenies’