Mark Allinson
Elemental
The sea in the night calls my bones and tells
of the debt they owe to its elements:
of calcium soaked from its crush of shells;
of sodium distilled in filaments
of swaying kelp, churning nutrients
from oxygen, hydrogen and carbon
atoms that bond and crack in the solvents
of time and life; recycling silicon
in shifts of sand, and the nitrogen
falling with the sulphur of tropic skies;
it tells of the blood-debt owed to iron
and of phosphorus sparked in fish-cold eyes.
Your bones are mine, calls the sea in the black
depths of the night, and I will have them back.
