Marloes Sands, morning, 19th July 2020
This is, for some, for all their lives, The Beckoning Edge:
The meeting place where Sea trysts Land
And, with sparse reluctance,
Grudges glimpses of myriad mysteries.
Here, a place and state of mind some truly hallow:
These are The Keepers, and the tideline is their Sacred –
For here it is they find their Finds…
And, strong-pledged, I’ll no more say than that.
The tideline: ever-open classroom
Where Nature tries to teach
About the many ways in which we harm her;
It thus superbly and infinitely is
A Museum of Human Stupidity.
For those of us who read the signs,
Tidelines catalogue far past wrecks and long-since sinkings–
Although, as Neptune and his nymphs trick ever fickle,
Nought arrives in timely order, nor ever named or labelled!
I wonder, tideline walking while musing on our Universe:
Was the dawn’s fox whose prints I counter-follow
Only a creature nose-steered, as he or she of habit
Daintily wove the limpety wrack, scragged with twigs and our hateful plastic?
Or was there, all along that silent snouty trot,
Opportunity a-plenty for Reynard contemplation?
Indeed – whether mammal, bird, or smaller being,
Why might not any creature philosophise their tideline…?
For tidelines undeniably are, and especially on days of calm,
Good places for reflection.
© Christopher Jessop 2020
