The Beach's Hand

The summer evening slumps slowly down,
With sun-cream smells and endless days.
Ten past nine, the sun still melts,
Bloated, as red and orange rays
Spread out and catch on the blue lipped hills
of wimpling waves in the swirl and swill,
thoughtless as the whispering wind
which catches clothes and nips at skin.

And just like children I’ve sand
In my hair and my pockets,
Like mermaid money has fallen apart on the shore,
Standing alone on the end of the dock, it’s
As if that coinage could have it’s own worth.

Distracted, my thoughts are far from here
The hulk of my island, the one in the middle
Of the sea salt wind and the tidal riddle,
Seems so far away though I stand so near.
Lonely, it groans upward, a grey scrag rock
In the winsome sea,
Attacked once, again, repeatedly
By the same swell that laps so calm beneath this dock,
The ocean is treacherously fickle.

But if I am that island, then I’d be happy.
Happily beaten, proudly wounded.
My island is only an island for most of the year,
Leap tides, summer tides, once or twice
A month, the beach rises out from the bottom of the ocean,
And joins my island to the rest of the summer.
It is the welcoming hand,
I imagine it is from you,
Saying: ‘come sit with me on the white, warm sand.’
And the seagulls aren’t screaming,
And I walk along the dark, stony beach
And I believe that you are once again within reach,
Saying: ‘come back here my love, I’m still waiting.’



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