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.
By David Selzer