11th July 2021
Woken by its alluring thump well ahead of her keenly-set clock,
She’s already ankling the sea
As lift-of-mist sunlight floods down the cliffs.
Out into the surf she strides, bold but not foolhardy:
It boils with boister, yes – but that’s its attraction!
Safe as long as respect shown,
The biggest rollers breathold underswum;
But anyway, who’d not want
To wide-eye those rushing green overlooms
With their staryellow sparkles and fracs of blue?
She’s wise about not trying to skin a ride
On just any lesser wave.
Many are too steepled for breaking to a kindly push:
They teeter for tonnage pounces which, caught within,
Would pitch-pole her into a sand-drubbed flail.
Thus, observed only by air-acrobat choughs and gaberdineflap cormorants,
On westernmost beach of furthest headland,
Happy-bobbing or hearthop ducking this brusthering white seethe
She patiently waits for the right shape of rising crest:
Just herself, but never lonely…
Then she feels it: not the only soul! But who else?
Certainly nobody from the shore; so, a seal?
Once, mask-diving, she’d been so surprised by one suddenly alongside,
No threat of course, apparently intrigued
(Or appalled!) by her landsome mode of moving.
From behind this peaking breaker she must duck
Was that a little laugh, a gigglet?
Calmer seas play many an ear-trick,
Imagining us voices and tunes in waterchuckles and slopgloops;
But in all this rowdy? Above, and now under, she peers about…
Then, she recalls this about Nature –
Creatures never trust stares:
They assume that they must be our prey.
Thus she must show no curiosity, behave as before,
And wait to see what might reveal.
One; two; three: girls her age or thereabouts, quite without shyness.
Immediately, two pairs sea-playing;
And as she, with each in turn, close moments shared
As in a crossabout country dance,
Fast recognised their different characters.
Games without words: all speech only by eye
And yet so easily, as if between sister twins!
Long underwater spells never feel chill
And even deeply breath-holding stays effortless, because–
Do these three mysteries pass air within their kisses?
…
Spellbreak, when a distant clifftop silhouettes one figure:
She, pointing, turns; already, the three have disappeared.
Forever?
Until early tomorrow?
Allover suddenshivery, her wade ashore’s immersed in teary frowns.
Nameless, unplaced, inexplicable, they;
Whatever, whoever, a lifelong memory made today:
Highest exhilaration, fullest freedom,
Fastest-hearted laughter never more real…
But this strongly, say some, can burn a moonpearl daydream.
© Christopher Jessop 2021
