I went down the beach for a poem,
and brought back the sound of the sea
and brought back the sound of the sea
Today, midweek, the beach is breathing with relief
The last
storm’s passed, the next not yet conceived
A trill of dancing sandpipers flit
along the water’s edge
Half-hearted wavelets sigh - benign
if not good-natured.
Black kite wheel and soar, scouring for a meal
They’ll
snatch from a child’s hand -
A black crow pokes a fish carcass
And from behind
the Emperor’s garden wall
(keeping us out, and him in)
A content chainsaw buzzes, while a blackbird sings.
Over the red paint peeling bridge and a black shag scuttles
Scampering from the river mouth he’d drifted in
His tattered Mac flapping as his webbed
feet slap and patter
Neck craning over the water, to his sentry mates on the rocks,
White with guano
icing powder like Christmas puds
They eye him askance – you can almost hear them tut
Drying
their wings, stretched
Like bird black angels of the east
Above, two hawkish
would-be lovers loop
In the clear blue sky, with the green blue sea below
And a
great black back swoops.
Slow white paper plane sailing boats fleck the line
Where the far side of the bay meets
The blue-grey back-drop of Fuji-san
Forever rising, clad in her colossal snowy cloak.
A black twin-winged helicopter chops and thuds
From the base
behind the woods
Menacingly improbable like a dark side bumblebee
Heading
no-one knows,
A steady beeline through the immense sea sweep
No
doubt up to no good
Two aged ojisan
sit in broken plastic chairs
And point out to the younger ones
Clambering into their white boats
With their red and yellow
nets
Dried out by the warm November sun
What will they bring back as it sets?
A flock of squealing school kids
Pours onto the soft green
grass
All bright-greenly capped
Their teachers like shepherds
without a dog
Hunched in the sunlit breeze, a few young mums
Compare their
toddlers toddling
One helps her little'uns stick bits of driftwood
beach bamboo
Loosely poked in the soft sand
A kind of ring fence,
a corral against the sea -
I’ll be back soon to see
What’s left of their
defences
