I

here alone apart
I realise

we are marked by the tide’s turn

and that drawing back
long aching inhalations
intakes of more than breath:
the very filling of lungs
with white and various
sounds
of beach
of foreshore
floating
in the heavy air.

Its constantness,
everywhere  
together
its everywhere and together
oneness,
though with such difference
scoured into the sand
by weather’s hand
by the wind’s rough play.


II

Shield the eyes
against the glare
against the pressing wind
spinning down and past us
out of the light noon-distant high-sunned
light,
glancing the tips of bejewelled waves,
dancing, only to fall to translucent hollows,
   only to rise and follow
the wave before itself,
that, even now and finally,
breaks into a foamed lace,
a fragile flower spreading
across the sand and shore,
a coverlet for this bared flesh of land,
wet glossy shiny sun-lit wet,
yet drying beneath our gaze,
leaving the infinitely-tiny
grains of sand’s
dew to glisten,
to sparkle.


III**

No pathways here
after the entrance
of footprints splayed
down the slight dune
through the ammophila
down to the hard sand the littered stone.
Only up and down
across perhaps
to the sea - from the sea.

Otherwise it’s up:
to sunward windward,
out out along the jigged line
of surf meeting sand,
a self-similarity,
a symmetry breaking on the shore.