‘Limpet’ by Anna Bindoff – Resurgence Prize, Highly Commended

You told me after all these years, in one
Of those sweet, unexpected, piercing lines
That we’ve become like limpet and a stone
Whose borders can be nowhere else aligned.
I wondered if you knew the home’s a scar,
Abraded by rotation at the brim
And strange exchanges keep them there, shell stars
In constellation, granite’s living limb.
They cling through longing years of tidal runs,
The ocean’s famine rhythm and its feast;
And hold on in resistance to the sun,
To drying out of life within life’s reach.
But there behind that shielding carapace,
A refuge of our tenderness, souls laced