Marion McCready: The Cockle Picker’s Wife

Marion McCready

Marion McCready was born in the Isle of Lewis but brought up in Dunoon, Argyll, where she currently lives with her husband and son. She has an MA and MLitt from Glasgow University in interesting but useless-for-getting-a-job subjects such as Classical Civilisations and Philosophy. Marion has had poems published in, or is due to be published in, Poetry Scotland, The Glasgow Herald, The Red Wheelbarrow and the webzines Snakeskin, Qarrtsiluni and Nthposition.

The Cockle Picker’s Wife

She hangs her blacks
on a washing line at the back
of a washed up beach.

The tide has left its mark
on the promenade:
offerings of seaweed,

cracked mussels, softened glass.
Gulls feed from her hands,
oystercatchers land

on her head.
She keeps cockles in her bed,
picks them by night under moonlight.

At her call the heart-shape shells
rise from sands.
Their rib mouths yawn,

part under her touch.
Her home is a haven for molluscs.
Daily she fills, from the Firth,

a bath and lies with them, skin
smooth as pebbles.
A black rock under green waves;

the waters flow over her head.