Beach Poem – On the Seaweeds’ Scattering

‘On the Seaweed’s Scattering’ is a beach poem, a celebration of beauty and a reflection on everything and everyone having a time and a place.

On the Seaweed’s Scattering – a Beach Poem

You cast a warm body
And hold me
In the drizzly bright of your palm,
A baby mule
Half-blind and staggering

 

Upon the grainy beach
We rest.
We fought the slightest ripple
Unsure how to lap
Or how to be lapped down / featherlike
Such was the weight of our fight.

 

Here and here
A strand of hair
A bunch of red and orange leaves
Dropping
And settling down on the warm ground
Among the sleeping snails
The rocks

 

Rounded in the salty air
Now glimmering
In the light of our eyes.
We wore warm skin
Filaments of a soft breeze
And on us
Passing clouds
Casting shadow puppets

 

One by one they solidify
Wax figures only
They breathe songs and bread with olive oil.

 

While we are talking
Our lips’ brook gushes our cheeks rosy
—the ripening peaches,
red and tepid with love—
We speak of the soft juicy flesh

 

Dripping down on our fingers,
And rushing down on our thighs.
Then, we sing the heat of a winter fire
Into our bones.

 

Like a flock of birds
Above us only sky.

 

We listen
As the wind rises
Over the moors
And whips offshore
Where no wave is safe
When gusts plain
-the ocean is more like a lake
Only for the salty mist lifting-
You’d swear the sea was flat.

 

The wet beach is like a mirror
A bright yellow ball bounces
We see flashes of rainbows
On the seaweed’s scattering
Between the lodged bedrock
And twirls of beach worms.
They were more like swirls and squiggles,
As if though they’d jotted words
And swivelled to bulge a story
To span
But until
the next tide. One shaped

 

Like a heart,
Another
Circling a spiralling yarn
-it must have curled
While digging-
A pirouette
A capriole
We’d spend years

 

Crowning. Daytripping,
The seagulls peck the soil soft
Their ploughing breath
Carving hips,
Their tucked wings
Brushing the mulch just right
For the wavering seeds,
Huskless, we sink

 

Into the oncoming tide
As the goose sweeps her chicks
Underneath her feathery robe
Until
No longer
We flap.
Come dawn
We’ll fly.

 

 

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