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David Selzer is a writer of poetry, prose fiction, screenplays and stage plays. He embraces digital platforms to share his work of more than fifty years… READ MORE
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ON BENLLECH BEACH 2020
We have moved once to accommodate the tide
on this August strand, crowded with many
who otherwise would have been in the Algarve
or on some island in the Aegean.
At least the sands are free this year of the Christians
whose jocular misanthropy of games
of tug o’ war takes up so much space.
High tide is still nine minutes away,
and the beach here rises just perceptibly –
but ramparts have gone, and a castle keep.
Someone has placed a child’s spade in the sand
guessing where the flow will end, the ebb begin –
or knowing it will be so, for the sea turns
just as it laps against the blue blade.
We are so pleased watching the waves recede,
as if we had outwitted them, outlived them
almost, we do not notice the spade has gone,
its modest owner emulating Canute.
On the horizon, anchored until high tide,
container ships and tankers are moving now
safe to cross the Bar, and sail into the Mersey.
Curious to face the sea as if facing
the future. Though the waters surge and swell
with many metaphors, for the most part
only the inevitable happens –
like the wave, the invisible tsunami,
that will strike these islands’ shores this coming
New Year’s Day. Something the hateful, the greedy,
and the ignorant have willed – for a chimera,
a mere abstraction.
8 responses to “ON BENLLECH BEACH 2020”
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Da iawn wir. Cario ymlaen, sgrifenwr.
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Diolch yn fawr iawn, gydweithiwr – chi hefyd!
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As ever, David, you have captured the spirit of Anglesey.
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Well, Dafydd, I can’t resist asking whether you’ve been invited to join the Gorsedd Cymru? After all, your ‘awen’ deserves bardic recognition.
I was transported to the shores of Sir Fôn, listening to the whispering of the waves on the sand but I was also reminded of something you have often told me, in your wisdom, that although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
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I like the metaphor of the ‘invisible tsunami’. When I do a political poem I usually take the bull in a china shop approach, but this comes at the issue in a pleasingly oblique manner. I’m wondering if ‘jocular misanthropy’ is a subtle dig at our at our PM, or if I’m reading too much into it.
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Many thanks, Tim. A colleague’s commendation is always much appreciated – as his improving the poem: ‘jocular misanthropy’ was not intended as a reference to Bojo but it is now. A (serious) thank you for that.
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RE: Re Tsunami you may enjoy my article: ‘Boris to move Irish Border to mid-Atlantic and cede Kent to EU?’ https://kjohnsonnz.blogspot.com/2020/09/boris-to-move-irish-border-to-mid.html
As Boris reflects: “Sometimes I’m a Brexit Superman – and sometimes I’m a Limited Access Lorry Park Kent” -
Beautifully written, all the more tragic for its portents… Thank you, David.
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