PORTH LLECHOG

The place name is frequently translated as

‘sheltered bay’, and so it is this hour

as she studies the fresh, pellucid rock pools

the last tide left; gently nets creatures trapped

and waiting – two small crabs and a shrimp –

and holds them up to the air briefly to marvel

at their peculiar uniqueness; returns them,

watching while they hide. She is hardly a child,

not entirely a child. She is tall and lithe

and svelte and supple; a girl gradually

becoming a woman; somewhere already

on that swift journey that seems to take

forever; somewhere on the margins

of childhood and adulthood – like the shore line

the tide is beginning to shift. And ‘porth’

can mean ‘portal’ or ‘gateway’, and ‘llech’

can mean ‘rock’, ‘og’ ‘harrow’, which better suits

the long furrows the endless tides have made

in these rocks, layered with golden seaweed,

during the last five hundred and fifty

million years or so,  and amongst which

she still crouches, net poised.

 

 

AngleseyBull BayPalaeozoicPorth LlechogPrecambrian