Beesands

Meet me at Beesands

We'll be invisible among

An eternity of coloured stones

On terraces roughed by waves

Pulled back and forth by

Lunar cords which play in time

And make the pebbles sing

On breezy days to chime

All along Start Bay a ring

On this edge we'll be alone

When winter days bring only ghosts

For drifting souls patrol this coast

Imagined calls upon the wind

Let our shoes sink into shingle layers

Unearth brass buttons in the stones

Of boots that wander dead man's lane

For on a distant April night, surprised

To sink so soon and in their stripes

But never see the stars again

Meet me at Beesands

We'll sit under a silent moon

Bring shelter, rods and bait

For bass swim among debris strewn

Staring seaward, watch and wait

For what the rippled surface hides

A broken village down the coast

Long swallowed by the hungry tide

And on this vast, shingled curve

Know the frailty of man

Against the versions of himself

And the unrelenting forces of the earth