The place name is frequently translated as
‘sheltered bay’, and so it is this hour
as she studies the fresh, pellucid rock pools
the last tide left; gently nets creatures trapped
and waiting – two small crabs and a shrimp –
and holds them up to the air briefly to marvel
at their peculiar uniqueness; returns them,
watching while they hide. She is hardly a child,
not entirely a child. She is tall and lithe
and svelte and supple; a girl gradually
becoming a woman; somewhere already
on that swift journey that seems to take
forever; somewhere on the margins
of childhood and adulthood – like the shore line
the tide is beginning to shift. And ‘porth’
can mean ‘portal’ or ‘gateway’, and ‘llech’
can mean ‘rock’, ‘og’ ‘harrow’, which better suits
the long furrows the endless tides have made
in these rocks, layered with golden seaweed,
during the last five hundred and fifty
million years or so, and amongst which
she still crouches, net poised.
By David Selzer