Oeuvre on the desires and inclinations of Basin Head’s Chondrus crispus
Prologue[i]
Chapter 1. The Dance
mid eulittoral[ii]
we float, my siblings and I,
wedded to
mussels blue
adjoined in byssal lace
in buoyant phototropic[iii] dreams, we dream
of our open-watered cousins
slender and sporesexual
in delicate robes of dichotomous branching
while we content ourselves with
broad flat fronds
each season, my cousin
blushes a different colour
red, yellow, green
encrusting and encrusted
to precious rocky substrates
life is different out there
salinious
kinetic
in Basin Head
lagoonlife is “suboptimal”[iv] they say
too hot[v]
not salty enough[vi]
yet here I sit, fleshiest bit
rotund even, weighing a wet half kilo
dancing a deep purple tango
with a sweet depressed mollusc
Mytilus edulis
a dulcet name for a “soft unsegmented body”[vii]
molle
cocooned in a “calcareous shell”[viii]
elsewhere
sessile and bedbound
here
my anchor, my mainstay
she dances in my skirts and clings to me tightly
filtering our waters for a bite-sized snack
//and there are times where my fronds brush up against her protruding syphon, or my
thick purple flesh slips into her unlatched shell//
her statocysts[ix] tell her I’m here
she feels me more than I feel her
and we dance,
bobbing along the Mere sludge bottom.
Chapter 2. The Green Crab
emerald pincers on a thick carapace
exo
skeletal cutlery
for inquisitive probings
she maps diagonally
Basin Head’s estuary
Carcinus maenas
Carcinoid menace
the colon – iser
invading the flesh, the tight space between shell and plant cell
tangled in our fabrications
her nippers clamp open the mussel’s shell
mandibles
sucking on succulent flesh
on the tender yellow mantle nestled within
delighted and delighting
entwined in this predatory caress
the pair sink and I with them
a triad of corporeal relish
in this knot the crab savours my flesh too[x]
– gelatinous aftertaste –
clunky and gauche, claw caught in mesh
she pulls on threads
unravels the work of the bysall weaver
and with this I am released,
I slip, a glissade
on the evasive edge of where air meets water meets sand
and
song[xi]
***
she joined the dance some seventeen springs ago[xii]
and found it so jolly
that she decided to stay
in ten years grew to a seventyfold sum[xiii]
some voracious predator, trapezoidal[xiv]
not pre-dating
our symbiosis, my mussel and I
but becoming part of
something different.
Chapter 3. Bloom
there have been springs
where the green was
too sage, too verdant
our fronds below the runny veneer
that pulsed towards sunlight as days got longer
//phytochromatic[xv] fixation//
no longer felt flickers within
for chlorophyllic bloom obscured all we knew
new tensions of disorientation
(Where shall I creep and meet? To which compass point? Where is MY sustenance?)
ulva, sweet green screen, remove your slender body from mine
eutrophied is this thick water— I choke on sour growth
and excessive nutrient[xvi]
encapsulated
in Basin Head’s estuarine lagoon[xvii].