Other Shores

Wind-drunk boats
Lumber round the bay.
Fine lace of timid waves
Neatly trims the beach.
Sand
Varnished smooth by a storm
Soon to feel the lash of the incoming tide.
“Beware”
The sea lilts
Though it snoozes for now.
Ravaged jelly-fish,
Landlocked, forlorn,
Bubble and heave their silent death rattles.

Other sands
see much more
than my quiet cove.
People
flung
ashore
fleeing battles
of tangled origin.
Children who have never seen a beach before
take their first sandy steps
On hostile land.
Batman t-shirts sand-sodden and torn.
No caped crusader to save them.
Only sighs and tuts
from distant heaving tables
where the daily news is borne.

This is what we cannot mourn.
Beached babies and salt-choked sobs.
Evolutionary empathies remain
Static.
We go about our days, our jobs
Pragmatic.

And so I sigh and wish things that can never be.
Turning back to the sorrow-sunk sea.