Shards of sail staple sky to sea as fingernail-thin boats lean in to the horizon.
The surge of surf converses constantly with the silent shore, urging its message upon the oblivious beach.
My children scramble on the man-made groyne, a facsimile of wild rock, in which they find caves 'with a proper rock on top' (Bea) and 'a hundred miles deep' (Willem).
We are here on bikes, salt wind in our hair, and my *** slowly absorbing moisture from the almost-dry sand as they unburden their youth upon the rocky playground.
And then come the treasures.
A flat shell the size of my palm and worn pearlescent smooth.
A fossil pebble of concentric ingrained ripples.
'Something amazing Mummy,' comes the cry. 'You have to see this stone; the colour of Coca Cola,' shouts my boy.
More treasures emerge and are grafted on to the sandy pile.
Quartz-like lumps and a mussel entangled with tiny seaweed strands and miniature white shells, like micro leaves and hints of feta in a fancy restaurant.
The boy wears welly boots, no socks, and a plastic medal around his neck. 'Batman, Batman, Batman,' comes the cry, while Bea determinedly scans heaven and Earth for jewels to stud her imagination.

Weather’s coming up soon lad, talk is, three days,
no catch for a week then*

Connors’ folk slough to the Arms
in the shape of four or five,
a tawny pint floats the hour,
and by seven the place is alive.

My father now by the edge of the groyne
is a gaze half mast at the sea,
as he sails himself to the brink of an isle
and turns a yard-arm to the lee.

He sets on his oars the cataclysm of waves
he casts the wind at his hair,
swears salt is the sword in the taste of this life
and not what falls with a tear.

He'll treble a note in harmonica muse
and rustily **** a bone pipe,
spit saliva colder than frost on the grease
and never complain of the gripe.

Running the wind or roaring the cape
or rounding the sound of the wire
his name is the take of all seafarer kin;
the hearth, my heart and the fire.

My father the salt, the seafaring man
a wave in the seas as they glide
now found to the ocean,
a son to the sea
the son to the father; my guide.