At last, the distant beach –
but the sand is grit, the waves lethargic.
Seaweed clogs the shallows.
(Later there’d been a village, a saint’s college,
an abandoned ‘town’, way up beyond the dunes.
Women brought linen down, puritan bundles, black washing
for the shoosh of the sea, its slow flense.
They demanded ‘soddening’, ‘shore trouble’, centuries of deadening,
of hard salt cleanse.
All revenge requests were met. It made perfect sense
in 3073
but that was two days home, a get-to-work dream.)
You decided nothing should mean
meanly. We should make the most of the merely seems.
You found softer sand, marked out each line, each number.
Childhood’s slumber! – you woke a beautiful creature,
gently, from the dry seabed.
We both watched what you gently did: scratched
a saving ladder,
a net,
a hopscotch grid.