AINSDALE BEACH - AUGUST 2023

AINSDALE BEACH - AUGUST 2023
 

A solitary jogger makes a rhythmical sound on the sand.

Squabbling seagulls break the silence of this windswept land.

The bashful sun hides behind any available cloud.

The sand dunes hold their secrets not to be said out loud.

It's like I'm sitting in an open air museum.

Memories roll in with the mist, in the sky I see them.

The clouds paint their pictures of a childhood best forgotten,

of someone waiting to explore pathways as yet untrodden.

The turbines eerily still despite the gusty wind.

Like me they've had to learn to be thick skinned. 

The beach was a place to which we came but not as a family. 

Posing for meaningless photos, papering over the disassembly

of a unit already doomed and a child who sensed this

who felt then that these were times about which he wouldn't reminisce.

The sand dunes provided an escape, there he felt free.

Looking up at the sky, feelings of kindness, love, empathy.

I close my eyes and I find myself back there again.

Could be that boy of six or eight, five or ten.

The sand I sink into is like a memory foam mattress.

All those years ago I was shown my own road to Damascus.

Clouds spill not rain but memories and scenes 

and words that were born from my troubled teens.