The mounds and the marshes

Picturing the marshy scene in early Grimsby.

Amid the bogs.

The swamps.

The marshes.

Is where the rain comes

filtered through Wolds' chalk,

to meet the salt of the sea.

Water entwines with the land

in braids, threads, creeks and becks.

An arm of the sea

reaches inland, into this liminality

where roads are rivers,

and eels sliver.

This is a place of wells that go to the depths

then breathe out bubbling water.

This place was known.

Known before the Vikings,

who cut up the Humber

into the heart of England..

Our shadow-covered estuary,

silty and brown, washes past

the boggy turf and samphire spikes of saltmarsh

to grow this land.

It's here where are the mounds,

the haugrs, the holms, the islands

that rise from the marsh.

These left-behind piles of sand and gravel,

made by glaciers, grinding their way.

Grinding stones to gravel. Gravel to sand.

Sand with silt, and then to clay.

Sculpting the landscape. Our landscape.

Our place of silt and shadow and sea.

That helped to make you.

And helped to make me.