Suite Ste. Luce 1-4 /14

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“Though lovers be lost, love shall not;
and Death shall have no Dominion.”
Dylan Thomas 

Suite Ste. Luce
1-4 / 14

 1

Black backed gulls,
nature’s alarm clocks,
waking the seaside
with their glaucous rattle.

High tide? Low tide?
We have drifted on our life raft
far from the grasping hands
of city clocks.

Gulls breakfast on the beach.
Day’s rhythm all at sea.

 2

6 am? 7 am? 8 am?
What do they mean?

The planet’s slow revolution?
This sun arc sketched in its stretch of sky?

Salt spray combing seaside fingers
through a young girl’s hair.

A man in a red boat, fishing.

3

Bare toes grip
damp wrinkled sand.

 Worms have written
runes in their arcane
wriggling script.

What do they tell us,
these secret messages?

Sunburned now,
the bare beach itches:
like tanned leather,
like salt on a fish skin
nailed drying to a frame.

4

The salt air drives its freshness,
needles knitting through my chest.

Slowed heartbeat of the dormant beach,
the tide’s blood flowing,
in and out,
inflating, deflating
the beach’s sandy lung.

 

 

6 thoughts on “Suite Ste. Luce 1-4 /14”

    • Thanks, Tanya: and yes, it’s very different from the other poems in the series and laden with memories. Ste. Luce is a special place and we have some wonderful memories of a summer cabin there, right on the beach. I particularly remember how warm the tide was coming in over the sun-hot sand.

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  3. I relate to all of this. I spent many happy days on Walney Island, off Barrow in Furness, cycling along the mile after mile of sandy beach, picking up shark egg cases, pumice from the inflated slag, glowingly dumped from the steel mill to run down into the channel, jellyfish, shells, seaweed, and felt the irritating sand between my toes. I often wish I were back there.

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    • You are a poet at heart, John; a poet carried away by narrative. I, too, long to return to Wales. But I know, deep down that I never will. In spite of that “And still I live in hopes to see / Swansea Town once more.” My grandfather sang that in WWI. Now it’s Swansea City and I guess I’ll never see “Swansea Town once more.” Except in my dreams … and I do dream of Swansea Sands and the Mumbles and the Gower Peninsula.

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