Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I miss the sea...

From Weymouth
by Will Eaves

What made you wake me so early
And with a look of mischief say,
A start this fine’s surely a sign
The sea is calling us today?
The train was blue, the water green:
A tinted postcard sent in May.

I’m sure I must have held your hand
In backstreets crammed with grockle shops
And pubs and reeling fishermen.
The smell I couldn’t place was hops.
I rode in state along the beach,
Beside the ride that never stops.

I missed a few easy lessons.
The teacher smiled, as if to say
It’s fine—it would have been a crime
To hear the call and disobey.
What did you do? The train was blue.
We had tea at a beach café

And well-thumbed fish-paste sandwiches—
That gritty complement to hours
Spent toeing desperately the line
Around two limpet-cladded towers
The sea and I besieged, the moat
I’m sure I must have said was ours.

What made me want to go early
And with a look of mischief say,
But I’m hungry? You wrote in haste:
His Highness made the donkeys bray.
The train was blue, the water green.
Yours, waiting by the beach café.

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