a riverhead marquee

ants mine the salt on my skin stretched out again on the riverbank    my daughter takes the remains, my blood puppet, to bed, like a flopsy bunny    ants seethe in the grass by the river, the river which sounds so nice    it bubbles in pools in the mud-coloured rocks, running into the tide    I can’t manage, I can’t, the acceptable face of a vacuum-cleaner sucker    now what do I do with her?    there’s always a fragile balance of dry grass to nests    the same coloured birds pick    and the mud-coloured fish pick    in lines the lines of algae,    blood-brown,    speckled,    mainly mullet