Listen for the words
whispered under beaches
As the high tide rip curls
beach
Awake in the night
Awake in the night
I confuse the sound of the palms
with the sound of the sea
and imagine I have slept on the beach.
When I awake there is no one
but the heat.
I saw you and was conquered
I saw you
and was conquered
sand defences between the tidelines
inevitably washed away
the guilty moon reflected
on the convex waves
the concaves between each hinting trouble
foam on the beach my and their undoing
castles on the cliff edge
slipped to nothing
I saw you
and was conquered
Beach night
The beach stones are thousand-year smooth, grey light grey when the clouds clear the moon, black as the night when the misting returns. The sky-black sea crashes foam white at its border. If there are voices, they are distant, both in place and time.
Today has been
Today has been a day of swings from yins to roundabout yangs. Some favourite things – sunshine, watermelon, friendship – and others not so tip top: wind skipping up sand, warm water and jellyfish in the shallows. But when the rain came and there was one umbrella for all of us, how many could take shelter? All of us, of course, because that is always the answer. All of us, together. All of us.
Beach (Dunkirk)
Bullets spit up sand
Hands over ears we cower
No red poppies bloom
She watched the stranger
She watched the stranger approach. He strode across the beach, his shadow long in the evening sun. On the horizon, waves grew.
Every morning of every summer they meet
Every morning of every summer they meet. Same beach, same time. “So, we’re all here, are we? Nobody’s died in the night?” And with that Luigi and the others smile and stand thigh-deep in the water and frown at clumsy splashing swimmers. Sometimes the women begin to sing.
the first snow for twenty six years
unstepped snow on beach
summer shade trees bone fingers
we walk down alone
Beach. Storm.
First the electric scent of the burning sand as the greasy black clouds roil up from the sea horizon.
Then the hiss of the rain hitting the beach and the steam and the smell of the earth beneath the sand.
simonsalento 