TALKING TO GOD AT GLASSON DOCK
By Simon Lester

"Two miles South of Cockerham on the West side of the Lancaster Pilling Road, one yard inside Hawthorn Hedge. Single grave marked by a blank headstone. Believed to be drowned sailor. Up to early 1800's unknown bodies were buried at the closest point to where they washed up. Local legend says that anyone who can read their name on the gravestone will see the date of their death."

Lore and folktales of Morecambe Bay. Rev, D.S. Shorrock. Publ. 1953.

Eternity lies before me. I am at peace with it though, under the endless sky and vast emptiness of this marsh. The grave is under a wind ripped gorse bush that flecks yellow in May. Blasted smooth by seasons salt and sand, the gravestone melts into the green turf.

It lies seaward to the ancient Cockerham road that winds without hurry to Lancaster. The twisting track drowned daily under the spring tides until the men and machines came to ease its pain.

An old meeting house kept its faith above the high water on a small rise, I see it a stones throw away; no prayers are said now, belief and the marsh dried up.

The curious come to see the gravestone and run soft hands across its scarred face. Brave laughter washes unease from their empty gaze; we all rush to our end.

I made my fools choice of death on the stinking corruption of Lancaster's busy quays where the whores, slavers and merchants looked to the tall ships for their fortunes.

I was not the last angry farm boy looking for gold and adventure whether from spices or slaves, I did not care.

With more ale than blood in my veins I left the captive land on a worm eaten clipper with a crew half drunk, one half stupid. The damp rising wind off the Irish Sea moved us uneasily down the silt filled Lune; pastures I had tended were a strange land to me.

As we drew by Glasson Dock I knew my time alive would soon be over.

The wind had risen to a gale and through curtains of rain I glimpsed on the hill high above the port three small ragged boys. My brothers and myself. We were leaning into the savage wind like gulls ready to lift off the top of a wave. I could see from the hill across the estuary to the customs houses at Sunderland Point and in-between the white-capped waves whipped against my rotten ship.

The wind was blowing so hard it filled the whole of that young body, every thought, breath and sound being crushed out of it by the pressure and violence of the gale. My mother used to tell me it was the voice of God. As the hill faded into the lashing rain, I knew she was right.

We went aground past Plover Scar; Cockersands ruined Abbey offered no sanctuary as the storm rolled us over. Some preserved by rum, struggled ashore to bang on rough doors of fishermen's cottages at Cockerham, I stumbled drunkenly under the waves until the marsh took me in its soft muddy grip as the tide sucked in and out of the endless oozing channels of natures hourglass. Black peat filled my lungs and it took four men to pull me to firm ground. They buried me here.

There have been no sailing ships for so long that I wonder if I dreamt them; yet when the sun blurs my sight I see through the haze the dirty white sail of a doomed clipper, but it is only the shining distant hulk of the great building by Heysham. The ships still cross the Bay; they no longer need the wind.

How can they ignore it?

It calls to me always, as a lovers caress in summer or as a drunkards fist in winter. The wind is always here, like the sky or the grass, it is part of this place, as I am.

The bleak church tower of Cockerham beckons but I remember the feel of the sea and the mud; no more cold blackness for me, I stay away from its merciless rest.

My thoughts are snapped upwards by Geese. Gabriel's Hounds, crying like lost souls heading north to home. I am at mine. This eternal landscape is my eternity. There are others here for this coast was old before Celtic Saints or Roman soldier set foot on it. I count the geese until the brightness makes me dizzy.

God still talks to me when the wind blows, I understand what he says, but my mind fades and I forget who I am.

Then I kneel down by the gravestone, cured under the great sky, and with hands still cut and wet from rotten ropes and torn sails, my fingers trace the deep inscription and as always the sharpness spells my name.

This story is © 2002 . Please contact the writer if you wish to use it in publication.