E coli colonies And clusters of blisters Pink clusters of blisters And scabs and lice Do they taste good your cockles? Do they feel satisfies your mussels? Do you feel alive, alive, oh? Candid she is ah The women of the water Of beds of sand burrowed deep Shadows under rocks On the corners of streets A parasitic mass Not the proverbial grain of sand A fluid called nacre Or mother of pearl is Deposited Layer upon layer Until a pearl Is formed The product of an irritant A cluster of blisters Opalescent blisters Sweet pink satisfaction in The labial palp The entrance way to the mouth
‘I’m so cold and I’m so scared And I’m so alone’
I just So, a pearl fisher needs to wear waders There’s no dignified way to put on waders And when it gets cold you have to **** yourself to keep warm You also need a set of tangs Mine are hazel I got them from the wood I cut it down but first I asked the tree if it was okay The tree is part of the river too you see It nourishes the peat That filters the water that Drips back into the river That is filtered by the mussel That the salmon and trout swim in Then the mussel The larvae attached to the salmon and the trout And it forms a symbiotic relationship Where the mussel filters the water and The salmon and the trout Spread their offspring The way you can tell the difference Between a male and a female mussel Is that when you pick up a male it's Literally dripping in ***** A constant ******* The females all spawn at the same time A mussel is an indicator species, Which in ecological terms means That it is a species that will Be The perfect indicator of the health Of the river The other things you need are A river speculum I haven’t made mine yet But we used plastic ones With glass cut to shape But it enables you to see the river The secret part of the secret river It’s red down there And it’s cold The women of the water They hide in the shadows under rocks And burrowed deep They can move very slowly across the river Bed A colony of mussels A family When you find mussels When you f When you find a beautiful When you find lots of them it’s Called a Good crook and this is where You’ll find pearls If you ask me the man who takes them is a good crook himself Bad crook And it’s I’m looking at it now and I can see It with the moonlight on it And it just it Keeps going But it’s tidal here it’s not fresh I’d have to distil it myself With copper pipes Copper tubes Copper coil When copper ages it turns blue And you don’t weld copper You braze it Soldering at a high temperature A Heat Mussels can live up to 150 years old I held a 120-year-old one And it was so wise and venerable I didn’t know what to do I couldn’t speak This mussel She was alone Down there in the red The angry red water She lived through WW1 and 2 And women’s suffrage My grandmother was alive two I wore silk because it’s pure And women are supposed to be pure Don’t know Freshwater nymphs I can see it right now And it’s just like little tiny mirrors Little tiny mirrors that are reflecting light back Speculum is the Latin for mirror Maybe the water’s a mirror But it’s tidal here so I’d have to distil it Saltwater mirrors Saltwater speculums Spectators of atrocity And mussels they grow With annual rings Annually They reach maturity around the Age of 30 Like tree trunks Like the hazel That helps me to keep them Catch them in its tangs But I want to protect them I am one
Little plaster shells But I cracked one And it wasn’t plaster Split her in half Not with tongs With silicone Pink flexible Gooey silicone Their linings bleed every month
It was a dark orange Red colour Because of the peat that was draining into the water