idylls of Rosebud

 

Blanket of sand cleaned each night

ready for feet to travel to and from the sea,

the sea shallow, parents’ relief, mothers

relinquish control for a time

to safest of waters, ankles, sometimes knees

but only at a cost of effort,

ideal for young bodies, the older seek

the back beaches for waves and surf boards,

listen to the scream of freedom

in every smashed wave upon forlorn rock;

stranded Odysseus, separated by years,

not wax and rope, from the headland 

community where they once belonged.

 

Flounder flicker in the shallows,

searched by torchlight at night, wood with nails

roped to secure, enough to spear

miniature fish in the minds of children as wild

and ready as shark or orca; plenty of toadies

too, those braggarts of the foreshore

who carry a bloated belief poison will protect,

the pier littered with their flopping dreams

that ebb away leaving behind crusty scales

and eyes that see only what has been left.

Sometimes three or four children pause

before a fresh scene of death, stare down

at the bloated caricature of oceanic freedom.

 

The wind blows the sand for hours and days,

takes fragments, hurls them into eyes and ears;

each morning the beach is the same

and unique every day for every footprint.

 

Sometimes an ant pretends purpose

lost in the boulders it tried to cross

beneath the surface tiny lions wait for the ant

to fall into their dish, wait with an angel’s patience

for the ant to relinquish the fight, settle

at the bottom and wait for the crush.

 

Spade and buckets carry sand and water

for castles and rivers, roads and buried bodies;

a hundred heads rest, stare at feet

below the surface bodies wreak havoc

until sand caves in, the whole thing repeats.

 

For hours I swam in that water, day after blue sky day,

roasted black and tender with salt,

language forgotten, stories imagined, 

crashing one into the other until mother’s voice 

demanded a return to boyhood, standing at the edge 

she holds a towel, smiles, remembers, I suppose, 

her own trips as a child, the games played 

in the same waters of Rosebud.