Shoreline

But those were early younger days.
So eager, waking with the dawn
and old enough to walk alone
on down to the deserted beach.

I never searched for shells or stooped
to pick out pebbles, choosing them
by shape or colour, leaving them
wherever they had washed ashore,
to be discovered by those who thought
such things important or worthwhile.

It was enough to stand and stare
towards the far horizon's end.
To see then, all that could be seen.
I wanted that cool salty tang
always there in my mouth and nose.

I stood there in the morning's cool
to look out over the still sea.
It seemed as flat and smooth as glass.
A sheet to touch the horizon.

But, other times it churned and writhed
in great pain or tormented hurt,
attempting to escape the chains
of gravity, as seeing clouds
above it floating free of weight,
it grew so jealous of their freedom.

I stood up on that cliff to watch
the hesitant bright-coloured specks
as people spread out on the beach
in pointillist bright waves across
the virgin sands. The way they took
the silence of the beach and grew
new waves of sound to fling right back
against the slow retreating sea.

Their tentative colonisation
of shore and then the sea, destroying
the reasons why I had just walked there.