WHITE GOLD

I speak not
Of the bright white sea salt
That gave this place its name
But of the folk who laboured here,
Wet as dishcloths
For centuries
On the Pans’ shore.

Salt pans – salt people –
Bare legged or lucky
In canvas waders
Passed the pail
From hand to hand
From father to son
‘til the flames went out.

In a hopelessness
Denser than the coal pit’s blackness
They stumbled, paddled and scraped,
Eyes reddened without grief
Inhaling the vapours of despair
When the devilish winter weighed
On sodden woollen coats.

But I have no sense
Of spirits broken
On the Pans’ shore
Where sons of men
Their sea-streaked faces
Etched with toil
Were thirled
To a living chain of sea-buckets.

Aye! – There IS nothing romantic
About salt
Distilled from the sea’s tears
Under a teetering seafront
Where daggers of cold spray
Splashed across
The beach-thrown wrack
And seeped through
Dank foundations
Where SaltPans people 
Made their homes.

Every age has certainties
And needing salt is one
For there are few myths
Few dreams about salt –
It is a fundament –
The simple truth
Of a salt crystal.
Humanity is a 
Multitude of arms
Stretching out for salt
And the workfolk of the Pans –
Low cheated
On the scale of life’s rewards -
Saw no beauty
In the sparkling crust
Left like a necklace
Under a full moon
Round muckle iron pans
Where salt for the farmers
The monks and the fishermen
Boiled out
Over plentiful coals.

Who keeps the memory
Of this boiling brine?
Not the oyster-catchers who sawed the waves
With their song
Nor the miners with their black gold.

A salute, then,
To the Salt-Panners of old 
Here/gone in a 
Blink of time
But their hearts unbroken
By the gales’ wild marches
Along the slippery shore.