A Ring of Gold

Always at new moon and full moon extremes of tide scarred this southern shore, back beach and front beach alike, and this year the last king tide of the winter was dose on the equinox. A storm and days of heavy swell had sent high waves to lick away at the dunes, undermining them and making sand-slides, flattening, withering, scouring the ropy roots of the marram grass. In the calm that followed, a low tide at midday left the rock shelf of the headland wide open to the sun. Its thickly knit brown hide of bladderwrack glistened, with a summer steam coming up, early as it was, only mid-September, its gloss drying in the late winter sun. More bladderwrack lay rotting in mounds along the dunes, and bull kelp with clawed black holdfasts on tough legs, some shod with stone.