On finding a young porpoise skeleton on the beach
We find you amongst the feathers and plastic rope of the high-water mark, in the driving rain of an August bank holiday weekend. An offering of the last spring tide. Mammalian ribs and the remains of a tail, you might have been a mermaid. Your severed skin, placenta like, lies a distance away, and the smell surprises me. It could have been roe deer, or fox. Or human.
Your head has been taken, and your spine has been worried by dogs. I lift you. Heavy bones and heavier scent, and carry you a short distance to the shelter of a rock. We draw curious stares and the children move further away. You are infinitely precious and I am overwhelmed by the urge to protect. You settle into the soft sand and your ribs remind me of my father’s, last breath breathed, on a rainy Tuesday morning weeks before.
The children are swimming now. Lithe bodies dancing and diving in rough seas. Your vertebral curve lies beside me, earth bound, and it is as though they have slipped into your skin and you have lost theirs. And I wonder if your mother is watching my children as I am watching you? Does she sense the leaden quiet of these bones, or is she calling for you still? I trace the ribs that held your heart and my daughter’s laughter catches on the waves.
It's time to leave and I am torn. I want to keep you close. To keep you safe from shallow eyes and unkind teeth. To take you home and draw you before offering you up to a fierce tide in a winter storm. But the law denies it and anyway your mother haunts the rain. So I leave you. In the shadow of that rock half buried in a hurried grave. An incitement to the sea and some small shelter from the limitless inquisition of the dogs.
My old coat is full of you and in the car the children complain. The smell is surprising. It might have been fox, or roe deer, or human. I can feel the heft of you in my arms and I pray for a savage wind. For the quickening of the waxing moon. For the summoning of the waves that will curl and carry you, dance clean your bones and call your kin. And I think of your mother, and your never born young, as mine bicker in the back and the rain slants the headlights on the road.
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This poem was originally published by Wild Roof Journal in January 2024 and can be found here. The accompanying drawing, ‘Traces, high tide: cuttlefish and porpoise’ was published by The Dark Mountain Project in Issue 26, and later won the Cass Art Award at the RWA Annual Open Exhibition in September 2025.