Stake-Lines

Stake-Net fishing is an ancient and once popular method of salmon fishing on the Solway Firth. Nets were strung between poles that stretched out into the estuary. It is thought, by some, that this is an even more ancient form of fishing than “Haaf Netting”, which is of Norse descent. I like to think that stake-nets may have been seen and caught the imagination of the Norsemen as they occupied this part of South West Scotland.

Stake-Lines

This string of stakes
sticking out of solway sand,
they are like the ribs,
of some great leviathan,
that, having spawned,
beached itself and died,
out of empathy perhaps,
with the salmon
that its skeleton
now traps.

If I stand here
very still,
and use an auditory knife
to cleanse this carcass
of unwanted flesh,
I am left with
the harsh death rattle
of the wind as it scrapes
past sinewed rope,
and the flip-flapping
of the seaweed
that clings
like dry, dead skin.

Stake Nets

These stake nets;
stitch the sands to the sky,
knit the present to the past,
join the horizon
to where we stand.

These stake nets;
are slowly parting
as years stretch the thread,
unpicking our story,
leaving us divided…

…leaving us behind.

Solway Stakenets

Waves curl
like commas
around stakes
that stand
stark as runes
against a 
vellum sky.

Above the
murmur of
the Solway
rise the
chants of
the Norsemen
as they ride
the white horses.

Our History

Our history,
tidal as the Solway,
is washed up on
these bays and estuaries.
A library
that requires
only our time
and inclination
to pause and browse.

Scattered here and there,
revealed at low tide,
the nets and poles
of stake-nets,
are the webs and spines
of old books,
and the rush of the sea
seems but the ruffle
of our pages.


Derek Ross