And lying dreaming
eyes closed memory wide open,
that delicious day of sunlight on teal water over
silver pearled sands.
~
A small boat holding laughing adults, children
and a dog who tries to drink the water,
sneezing with disgust and shaking his head;
effervescent droplets dancing
in the salt encrusted air.
~
Darkness falls over dunes of marram grasses,
flattened, fragile, against howling winds
stitching shifting, sandy slopes,
grasping roots holding against oceanic fury
until silence whispers in the watery moonlight.
~
A hissing surf caressing weed entangled
boulders
where a seal sings to the stars,
glowing phosphorescent trails across indigo
heavens.
~
A smell of salt and herring and creels and nets,
low white cottages with lines
strung with washing and gossip
blowing in a wind
sharp with fractured fragments of shells;
and lives of hardness,
of beauty,
always the wind
always the beauty.
~
The pain of standing shore bound,
hopeless eyes scouring the restless waters
rolling a brother a husband a son
against the broken spars,
the broken hearts,
the broken families,
the seabirds overhead
crying, crying, crying.
~
Waiting impatiently for the nurse with the
needle,
eyes sealed to the cold electric glare;
hushed voices impatient to be gone
back to rain washed streets,
to dull stuffy rooms,
to dull stuffy lives.
~
Five years old
I race in the field behind the cottage
dwarfed by a vast sky,
chasing dragonflies.