North Sea
At the desolate edge of
Norfolk the lighthouse,
its subordinate houses
beyond a wheat-field,
astutely located, the grey church
austerely erect hazy
above the caravan parks,
everywhere St George
and Union Jacks ablaze
outside the tea-rooms.
campsites, some like ragged
shorts worn and shredded,
the beach below cordoned off,
from the sea at high-tide
by metal clamps and beams,
summer idyll behind an ominous barrier,
elsewhere shingle beaches,
we tumbled down to join
anglers and exhausted couples
falling out of the water
harried and bullied by the tide,
in the long drab winter I’ll
recall this sky of a beach
empty to the horizon
stilted huts aloof against the
shrinking sandbanks, gulls,
waders shifting as their foothold
vanishes in the advancing flood,
people invade the emptiness, some
gathering in determined groups,
approaching, some a scattered army
mustering idly, disorganised
but resolute to re-occupy
the infinite playing fields
of pools and moated castles,
bivouac'd, umbrella'd territory,
children hilariously barefoot
in the mud, great joints of adult flesh,
slumped in relaxation, as we walk
through scatterings of broken shells,
the tide fills the wrinkled sand-ridges;
along the harbour reach boats lean,
gulls hysterical lament at dawn,
I wake longing for a new horizon.
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