From their metre-deep sandy resorts
the waves have raised these hard orbs:
clenched like cement hedgehogs
they wear their ribs inside out
and pricked with a white picket fence
to keep their soapdish interiors –
their lattice-gill-slither selves –
from the crunch of an oystercatcher’s kiss
or the orange fog of this starfish
that causes one cockle to buckle and let
its long pink foot slip like a leg
from the slit of its crenulated skirt:
soft pogo on which it floppy-leaps
away across the wet desert.