The Cockle Shell Collectors
Created | Updated Jan 12, 2009
“We go to dig fish” the gangmaster said
to Chinese workers crammed in the bus.
Half a world away from home in Fujian
they stood confused beside Morecambe Bay.
They saw a tranquil space where water, land
and sky interlaced. February cloud
filtered light on hammered pewter sea.
They walked westward with rakes and nets,
as mud oozed and squelched underfoot,
water wavered in rivulets and pools.
They raked for heart-shaped cockles on sand
squirming with ragworms and lugworms.
Here generations of locals went cockling
marked paths that passed between channels.
The sun died in the bay, trailing wisps
of blood red on water. The gangmasters
itched to exchange cockles for money,
drove the workers to gather more bagfuls.
They laboured on, hankered for families
whose photos lay close in their pockets,
dreamed of returning home to Fujian.
The tide came in like a horse at a gallop,
filling the runnels with a sudden surge
of water like ice that shivered their blood.
They hurried to flee but no land beckoned.
The sand where they trod dissolved into water,
coast disappeared under stretches of sea.
The implacable ocean reclaimed the bay.
