Silke Heiss is a South African writer, who has published poems, short stories and a verse novel in local literary journals and anthologies since 1991. She has co-authored self-published books with her late husband, the poet Norman Morrissey, as well as two solo collections. She is a member of the Ecca Poets and has collaborated on ten books with them to date, the 11 th is due this year.
Once inhabited
Shells – strewn along the beach –
ruins of houses, once inhabited
by soft flesh.
No place for scribes
This is no place for scribes,
this wild rock garden
of scarlet-spiked urchins,
verdant seaweed-tufts on bulky, granite bridges,
under which surge through
the tides.
All here is wordless,
there is no space for tongues
– unless it be in starfish fingers,
ominous and mutely blue.
The Field Guide Poetry Magazine 