Happisburgh Incident

Stephen Edgar

Haysburgh: that’s how they say

The name. Who would have guessed?

Set on that stretch of Norfolk coast the sea

Has been at least five thousand years obsessed

To gather back and wash away.

Here, on the estuary,

Exposed by surging tide,

Some ancient human footprints rose to view,

After eight hundred thousand years denied

In darkness, granted fleetingly

The light they once stepped through,

One adult and a trail

Of children—at what hour, at midday, dawn,

Late afternoon as day began to fail?—

Most likely on some path they knew.

And plans were swiftly drawn.

There were a bare few days

To photograph and mould the prints at speed

Before the wind and tide came to erase

Those footsteps and all trace was gone.

Yet something there was freed

To wander off, or let’s

Imagine, floating in the eye or mind

Through Happisburgh, shadowy, see-through silhouettes,

A taller shadow in the lead,

And smaller shades behind.

STEPHEN EDGAR has published thirteen collections of poetry, the most recent being Ghosts of Paradise (Pitt Street Poetry, 2023). His previous book, The Strangest Place: New and Selected Poems (Black Pepper, 2019) received the Australian Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry in 2021. He lives in Sydney.