Lazarus in the ocean

Skin and vinyl part, doors open, voices

escape the stifling Valiant station wagon;

boys race shadows and sisters to the water.

They scale down the evolutionary ladder,

unwashed necks bear gills, outstretched hands

and feet display webbing between fingers and toes.

Sun, casual observer, marks data all summer

on spreadsheets of sand; time constant

as the distant sound of waves sucking up land.

Kept company by the smell of the mosquito coil

they sleep on Hessian stretchers prickly as anemone;

tents snap, disturbed reptiles among the salt-stunted trees.

Lulled by the distant undertone

of waves rolled across ancient words

the boys dream to the tune of earth breath;

rise early to grass-gasping mornings
before the sun bakes the world

too hot for bare feet to touch, become

tanned grains of sand tossed by the Laundromat

ocean, filled with the gull cry of the sea,

wind whistling across sand and water.

Older brothers fish from the pier watched

by salt-crusted, unshaven men whose voices spill

with the cracks of seashells, their hands split

like old car tyres, nails as hard as marlin spears.

The prodigal children hate the smell of fishing –

as if a part of ocean has been stolen.

The salt-soaked, splintered pier wood

baked with the stench

of death with human fingerprints.

They fail to understand the ritual

sisters undergo with towels, sunglasses,

bathers and lotion, little water

action, various poses - books open

and unread, words less important

than the feet of young men.

Fathers visit the pub every day between

noon and three; avoid the water like cats –

prefer the taste of hops to salt.

Mothers sit on the sand, towels wrapped

tight from waist to ankle to make mermaid legs.

Right hands clutch straw hats that threaten to escape.

Keep vigil, distant eyes, secret thoughts safe

as the soft flesh of mussels that cling

to the pier’s posts like black Christmas lights.

From dawn to dust the prodigals are let

loose, tiny E=mc2’s, hair matted

like the fur of  wet tennis balls,

raw eyes filled with the darting arrow heads

of fish, their chain mail

flashing in the murky ocean light.

Hearts pulled by the tide, exultant

in the chaos, purpose absent until mothers call

from the hot sand shore, fathers beside them,

already bored, and they, thousands of brown Lazarus

swathed in the sea, close to the Light,

are called back to life once more.