GLIMPSING GODS
That evening in the Poseidon Lounge of our
5 star clifftop hotel, spa & resort –
with the tideless Mediterranean
lapping soundlessly, timelessly out of sight –
there was something about the in-house
entertainment team’s announcing
the week’s festivities, some gaucheness perhaps,
an enforced glee, which reminded me
of school camp on the Lleyn Peninsula
the August I was nine, and we ate
Wagon Wheels round the fire, and told jokes
about Hitler, the war being recent.
The first day I woke anxious at dawn, and peed
in my sleeping bag. I told no one, and slept
in damp bedding for however many days
and nights we were there in the ex-army
ridge tent, vast, dark, noisome. Even in sun I
shivered and drifted as my fever rose –
and nobody knew. On Porth Neigwl beach,
or Hell’s Mouth, where Atlantic rollers roar
I dreamt – beyond my insouciant fellows’
paleness in the shimmering and pulsing waves –
I saw a glistening, slate grey dolphin
rise and fall, effortlessly, endlessly.
Anne Wynne
January 2, 2026Beautiful, David. I love the travelling back to childhood – very evocative. I felt moved by it and wanted more – was disappointed it ended.
Harvey Lillywhite
January 2, 2026I think this poem reminds me of a helplessness we can feel when we’re young that twists in the heart, probably until we shuffle off…
Jeff
January 4, 2026Lovely poem David… those moments of watching and waiting when usually nothing happens…. And then a dolphin.
As with me, Mick and Dave, on the latter’s lobster boat on an insane short-notice (decided upon in the pub at closing time) overnight trip from Alderney down to Guernsey, drifting silent on the falling tide as the engine had conked. Dave down a hole in the deck, oil-covered and cursing his spanners,, or lack of them. Mick and me grinning at him, having a fag in the moonlight, looking ahead into a silver sea…
We are bumped hard by something big, and spin. “What the f**k was that?” Dave shouts, his bandanered head shooting out of the deck. “Nothin’ Dave… only a small whale…”, we laugh…
And watch as a black wet back after rising, slides by, and sinks…. Silent.
Like yours, a memory never to be forgotten, and possibly impossible to adequately re-tell in describing the inner vision of that moment in our heads.
Mick now dead, our phone conversations always included… “Do you remember when….?”…. And I do, as if both it, and he, was only yesterday.
Neil Jackson
January 12, 2026Memories. Thank you, David.