The Refuge Box

Refuge Box on the pilgrim’s path to The Holy Island by Graham Robson

Today I learned about the Refuge Boxes that sit on the tidal flats between the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and the mainland of Great Britain. It is little more than a platform perched above the sand, but for travelers stranded on the flats when the tide comes in, it provides temporary refuge from the sea.

The Northumberland poet, Katrina Porteous wrote a lovely long poem on the Refuge Box which begins thus:

I

At the edge of the Low, the wind blows cold.

A world that is water and not water

Stretches away, reticulate;

Shaken within it, redshank, godwit,

Their scraps and patches of safety shrinking,

Spreading. Miles of sand-flats. Glittering

Streams and ribbons of water, weaving

Earth and sky; between them, the golden

Island, afloat on equivocation,

Or safely grounded there, the tide

Either coming or going around it, the road

Snaking towards it, narrow, human.

Fade up seals, low Hooooo.

You reach the Danger sign, and stop.

You want it, that Island, stretched out like a ship

Ashore on its saltings, adrift in a sea

So blue and endless, you’d think the sky

Had swallowed it up, or else had fallen

Smack down into its own reflection.

Out from the causeway, over the sand,

Guideposts narrow towards the Island,

The mirror-image of their own

Vanishing – an invitation.

The Slakes answer the sky’s question:                   

Blue?

Blue.

Now, will you

Step out into an unknown element?

All of us, pilgrims in the world, need a refuge box from time to time.