Liz
Macwhirter
poetry
To an oystercatcher found at low tide
The sea left you lying
as if mid-flight.
Quill wings lifted
to catch a last breeze, one leg
hitched high, gut-red beak
poised to nip the sea
and, trailing from your skull
a wimple of bootlace-seaweed.
Once, frilled with silk
you made flotsam
of oyster pearls
dined an epicurean, your call
folding along waves
cockled the grey.
You beaked bobbins
of polymer yarn, tapestried
your frame, unravelled
your days. The sea
left you lying.
Your cheek, laced
a widow’s black
and with a dressmaker’s
blind popper, you eye
my empty face
undone by unmaking.
This poem emerged from field notes collated on the Isle of Islay. This recording was made on Iona as the tide washed in – I was fortunate to catch an oystercatcher calling at the start of this take. Beautiful even in death, the body of an oystercatcher pulls the narrator’s ecological grief into focus. In my creative-critical research and writing, I seek to explore and enact the intersectionality of trauma spirituality.