DAYS IN CARRADALE BAY

 

The waves caressed the shore

Like ribbons of white lace,

Edging with delicate threads.

The waves spoke,

Sizzling, slushing, lazy on smooth sands,

A song of a summer day.

In Carradale Bay.

 

 

Biting at the rocks,

Roaring foam from its mouth

A mad dog of a sea,

Rabid, vengeful, a killer,

Gulls shrieking, held on the wind,

"Hear us when we cry to thee"

A day to pray

At Carradale Bay.

 

 

Ribbed sands, a child's sands,

Remember again, now a child again

Playing with bucket and spade

By flat waters of the Wash.

How can they rib the shore so,

These soft tumbling waves?

And here don't tread - a turreted castle

Bucket-sand up-ended, a moat, cockle shells,

The child gone home,

End of day for play

At Carradale Bay.

 

 

The day is wet,

The sea like dirty washing,

Dark trouser tub-froth

Over dark and dirty straggled-seaweed sand

By the stream soap suds trail the tide edge.

Air wet-cold like wash-house air.

(But see further up the beach

High tide has left a curved imprint, a graph,

A black filigree of delicate design, old lace curtain nets.)

This day too cold though for delay

On Carradale Bay.

 

 

 

Was it only yesterday

Picnics on sandy hummocks,

Dams built in the stream

Sailboards, canoes, yachts anchored,

Swimming, shouting, girls in shorts,

Bonfires, parties in the dark?

No, these were but spectres,

Surely never that way

On Carradale Bay.

 

 

Today slate skies,

Seas heaped like coals,

The air pressing as in a deep pit,

Winter sleet drives and the sea hums.

Darkly the sea comes in

And the sea goes out

And the sea comes in again

And sings a song of dread.

This sea is best left to itself

To brood alone.

So walk today

Another way

From Carradale Bay.

 

Perhaps tomorrow when the waves sing

And show their white fronts to the sun

I'll stand silent and alone,

Casting a long winter shadow,

And listen to their storm tales -

Shanties from strange islands

Out leagues away

Far, far beyond this Carradale Bay.

 

Today the sands were hard with ice,

My stick clinked as on a metal shore.

No footprints, no pawmarks pressed the beach

But those of yesterday.

Sun shone, hard glittering light,

Dazzling, bewildering, across cold seas,

Slanting level upon the snows of Arran.

I walk, but make no marks.

Perhaps I am not.

Was it another time I walked this way?

And I am not, then, here today

On Carradale Bay?

 

 

Chris  Mears