Porth Neigwl

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.