Shades of Love

Looking For You | Shulling Peas | To The Island | Wood Pidgeons | Iles Flotantes | Wall of Glass | Beech Mast | Deep Pool | In a Desert Place | The Great Love | Watch Me Dance | Change of Season | Following | A Place For Conversation | All Time | Gone | Marram

Marram

Marram, twisted and bent in the wind,
quaking along the dunes, yet holding them firm,
against the attack and onrush of the tides.
The smell of seaweed, air cold on my face,
face burning with a memory pushed away,
successfully folded into a deep oblivion
over years of make-believe and let’s pretend.

Never thinking, or speaking, of another beach,
sea-wracked, dunes with marram and thrift,
memory returns of a wild loving under the cliffs,
half in a cave, soft shifting sand, a high cavern.
We heard the sea approaching, fearful of drowning
we gathered our clothes and ran to the high ground.

I don’t know how we climbed back to the cliff path,
I don’t remember how we put on our ordinary selves again,
resuming our everyday lives, meeting only in company.
I do remember the marram and the tide and the sand itching,
the water lapping to our feet and the high star rising,
always I will remember your face above me and sand in my hair.