The rain makes a smudge
of this landscape.
A blur of emerald bleeds
into bays of slate blue
& all paths trickle
towards the ocean.
You can smell it
carried in the mist
long before you see
its stoic sentinels-
droplets of the Atlantic
spraying hair
weighing down eyelashes
filling lungs.

The abandoned mines
at Botallack
keep their deepest secrets
laced with arsenic.
Bricked up
whispers chase
poisoned veins of tin
& copper
through the rock.

There's a diagonal shaft
beneath the breakers
where eight men and one boy
were buried undersea.