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No 10 - Summer 2005
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| Adam Elgar |
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| Beaches |
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Holidays were life on red alert, ambushed by ecstasy,
drooling vanilla,
wasps and tar, our backsides mangled by the same new pebbles
squatting
(monarchs of an ossuary) high above the same new water,
squabbling.
We tolerated small waves, let them nibble shingle, mould time's bones,
but what we craved
was rearing terror. Something absolute without a name lurked
in the glass-green chill
and teased us, flicking fishes, tiny rubber-bands, around our legs,
too busy safe unreal
to match the lovely monsters homing in from under the horizon,
true secret reason
for this swaying element (that, having failed again to kill us,
let us wobble
bloodless, semaphoring up the endless slope, appalled
on new-born feet). |
page(s) 39
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