souvenir version 2

Souvenir (1)

A spill of gulls, the shine of the pebbles, the November sun too low –
the walk is like a drill today leading us further than we
want to go. The beach shelves, the cliffs flake, and always
the fishermen are pointing their lines out to sea.

When a little black and tan dog comes scratching around us
you tell me how you’d been ill the first time you came here,
could barely walk without a stick – a young man then but
teetering with the old, with the preoccupations of the old,

amongst the upturned snouts of boats and the shingle that falls
away to a sinking depth. You didn’t swim then of course though
it was late spring. You just remember suffering, the inexplicable
frailty of flesh, the dots of orange crab pots twitching.

Julie-ann Rowell