Mike in Finland

Sunday 14 October 2012

Hello France


I´ve noticed a sudden increase in hits from France to my blog. That´s nice. So I´ve decided to post a poem in honour of my French visitors. This is a fairly new one, which I plan to include in my next poetry collection and which will appear in Octopus, the new anthology to be published by Templar Poetry in November. This is a summery, beach poem, just right for these grey and rainy autumn days (grey and rainy in Finland, at least). Feel free to comment, if you wish.


Origins

Beneath the foundations, for me, of the word holiday
lies Swanage, my first remembered beach;
holiday´s Jurassic level, on which
all other resorts and cities worth a visit
rest. So waves rib the tidal sands
under Prague and Gstaad.

And behind the word beach, the chalk cliff
barrier of the northern headland rears up
like the humped back of some prehistoric beast.
Rollers gnawed at its base and crunched pebbles.
The deserted, desolate end of Swanage
drew my wandering steps as close as I dared go.

Back at the family base of towels and deckchairs,
I gazed past the high-tide line of dried out bladderwrack,
over wet sand and dazzle of sun rays
cast off the moving sea, to the distant cape,
remote as the li-lo I was never allowed
because it might carry me too far out.