5th May 2021
April this year breezed sunny, steadily cool, and shower-less.
May, now, has galed in Marchly, its first holiday
Rain-reining children away from beaches and indoors to play.
After weeks of fearing frost, coastal gardeners
Must pray urgent tenacity for their fruit tree blossoms:
It blows hat-grab squally, frapping coats
And fraying all moods temperwards.
This morning, such an artist’s light – all thanks to gapping clouds
Which bluedash the sandstirred greenbrowning sea,
And sunflash those lines of breakers
Which tell the arguments of tide race and Beaufort Scale.
This broad beach’s breakers blow back-combed friss
As the offshore blast rears each for toppling pounce;
We must walk the shore with a weather eye
For those bolder swells which design on headlong gallops
To the very drowning of our boots!
Here’s a policeman-yellow angler
Who tall poles the unimpressed sky with all expensive:
When out into the mischievous surf he shines his spiderthread,
Neptune will have none of it!
As he, retrieving, kneels to better curse the tangled tackle,
We cheery a greeting; but his nylonfrackle hood
And obsessive concentration blinker us inaudible.
A toddler’s spade is bright lemon, too:
We are surprised to pocket it,
For surely many others had passed here yesterday…
… Where, strand well south, upon the windsculpt sand
Each pebble has its own gritty pediment, an air-cut bow wave.
No swimming morning, this, with a runningpace rip
Looking leg-hungry just beyond the nearest breakers;
Nevertheless, young ones should be abroad
To know what is special about earliness:
To discover, despite today’s mercury-shrinking wind,
That cunning can find a calm rock tucket
Drowsed bronzeably Mediterranean by this salty sun.
© Christopher Jessop 2021