As I stand here alone,
Already? Can it be the end of day?
Nightfall
Which seems to come,
Yet somehow doesn’t quite
Pulls out my breath
As I look on to see
In twilight
Both sun and sky
Exhale a doubtful end.
Stood here
Face kissed by salty air
All worlds and times and homes seem in slow fade –
As I admit, at last, this felt and lived-in place
My place; my home, a life well-loved
Is gone.
Flood washed
Cold water over sand
Salt marsh on covered stone
Mud wet on village grass.
Why then am I so tranquil
Witnessing this epitaph?
Still-standing villages exist
All taking stock
Or planning for the next high tide to come,
Defences set
Against seas reaching further every day
Seen as invading force
A fatal tidal surge by moon pulled ever up.
Until those bastions too
Succumb to sea
All wave-swept down
By awe-inspiring force.
Why do those second from the sea,
Now front-line in this long and futile clash,
Obtusely plan against
And fight the very flow
That cleans them daily
Washing fresh
Their hearts, their souls, their minds?
A rolling, changing process
Gifted me my life of wonder –
Before it forced me too,
With the very thing I loved,
To shift, to wander on
To seek, perhaps,
Some new-found happiness.
Did water ruin me?
Or was I born of it?
Waxing, waning; flow and ebb,
Flood fall and rise
It made this place
And it will always be a part of me.
And for that joy, I rise
Soul-singing
For the times I knew:
Suspended stratospheric
On friends’ sweet laughter in the sun
When pure joy was our theme
And we, immortal, clambered in the wind!
Kids barefoot, running on the sand
Deft dances, and a bliss of souls
Floating in time, weightlessly.
My sadness may be strong
Bereft of love, bereaved of place,
As like a skimming stone
I know I now must put to rest
My gravity defying feat
And sink to sleep, deep down below.
Days, hours, seconds,
Will always heave up memory
But what is lost
Will still reside,
All kept in mind
My smiling-weeping feeds a
A recollection ranged
Within a rising flood:
My tide reciprocal
In tears.
