Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries
Toad Tide
Waking from winter-deep half sleep to ache
and seep and sap, you stir in the ooze,
heave your tender bulk from mud to air,
begin the heavy-limbed creep to the waters
of your making, weeping soft poison to ward you
on your way. Risking rat and road and raptor,
you find the river of your kind, the blind tide flowing
to ancestral pools, its gathering force, its cold-blooded
heat. Your tongue forgets spider, slow worm, slug,
thick now with another hunger, for the swelling creak
of song, the swarm and clamber, grip and cling,
then stillness, the beat in your throat, copper-eye
smouldering just above the water as you ease
and pulse and slowly loose your double string of pearls.
Rachael Davey lives by the sea in Wales and works in nature conservation. The Rialto will publish her first pamphlet in early 2026.