I have always found the coast fascinating. Memories of geography field trips and family holidays to the southern coast of England where over the years I observed the power of the sea eroding the land, as rocks crumbled and the paths I walked on as a toddler sank beneath the waves. Then I moved to south Wales and observed a different set of processes, the sand shifting around the bay causing dunes to rise up one end while exposing bedrock and clay at the other. And an awareness of the increasing battle between nature and mankind as bulldozers regularly redistribute the sand back along the beach, and the sea deposits along the beach the rubbish we have let pollute it.
I walk along the shore almost daily. Often my eyes are drawn to the open expanse of sea, and it inspires me. However, this week I decided to challenge myself to write a number of short poems that focus more on the shore itself. This is the first.
Along this boundary
between fluid movement
and solid ground
you will find the scattered pieces
of what was
and what will be.
Hope
and heartache
lie exposed
by ever changing tides
as man and nature
draw their battle lines.
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