Fiona Clark
On Happisburgh beach*
clothed in nothing but woven air
like the fairytale Emperor,
or a heath-land butterfly,
or sand-martins, darting
from their dusty burrows
in the crumbling cliff-face,
pulses of feathered breath,
with a fiery appetite for gnats.
A soft sweat cools her flesh,
which is not naked, or even nude,
furred with minute hairs
stirred by the breeze –
thinks she might be a hare. Or a seal.
Her ears twitch, her skin craves water,
she skims the tide-ribbed beach
pausing only to pick up
a coiled and chambered creature
curled in stone.
The light hollows of her footprints
are shadows from the dawn of time
when a family of early hominids paddled
across a sun-warmed channel
from a distant shore, in search of shrimps,
and soft-shelled crabs scuttling in the shallows.
*The earliest hominid footprints outside Africa were captured by archaeologists using 3D digital modelling on Happisburgh beach, Norfolk, UK, in May 2013. Happisburgh is a fragile ecological site, where the cliffs are gradually being eroded by the sea.