Beach inspired poem

JOURNEY INTO NOW

On the beach of childhood

Standing high on pebble banks

To watch the unseen wind

Whip waves to froth

 

And blow the gulls of aspiration

Off their course

Like Autumn leaves

Across the bay

 

Grandad joins me and we walk

On firm and ochre sand

Which stretching wider as the tide retreats

Unveils its treasure

 Butterfly shells, striped white-pale violet

And twisted cones of pointed brown

For drawing pictures in the sand

We walk for miles, content to make no progress

Ghosts of happy shrieks from childhood past

A glimpse of shrimps, in rock pools under towering cliffs

And crabs in dim salt-weed-smell-caves

That echo of the bygone days

When hope lurked somewhere not too far away

If one could only find the magic lamp, the key,

The one enchanted shell, the lucky holey, holy pebble

Or real me

 

There is a rock when tide is out, to find on special days

When spells are in the air

And Grandad and I,

We found a Guardian living there…. an eel

Inside the rock, a deep dark water cavern

Reaching deeper into dreams

Where kindly wizards with wavy, whispy, wiggled, white and wafty hair

Can take you with a drum-beat

 

A truly huge and gliding eel

Twisting in a playful dance

To ask you in ……. and down I went

Like Alice into Wonderland

 

Slow-motioned mosses pass with ferns

And glinting pairs of winking eyes

Into a crystal cave below

With soft light glow

 

Past amethyst and tourmaline

And stalactite of quartz

Round zircon and the spodumene

And move towards the source

 

Enter an enchanted land

In shafts of rainbow light, and here to sit on cinnabar

Await the animal of power

….and will it come …..

 

A harlequin of fishes swim at my feet, so fast to make a blur

To mirror parrots round my head

And all the animals of flight

The iridescence of their wings make more and more the rainbow light

 

Through spinning fairground-ride of colour

Comes a horse of purest white

With diamonds on its brow

To guide the way with light

 

The jewels upon its back

Send healing rays

To those who see it zinging there

……….. and even some who don’t

 

Prancing full of energy of pure intent

And whispy, waving wizard with white and wayward

Tumbleweed of hair

Waves wands of wind to blow the Windhorse in

My broken heart was black against the light

Unready for this visit, and this might

Of right and good

Bucking, kicking Windhorse sets souls free of scars

 

Sent out on paths of satin to the stars

And shows how even small charred hearts can grow

And glow

And go into the world to find all colours of the spectrum

 

Merging to make white

To fly a kite of joy

Across these windswept sands of time

Stamp out the pain

 

Stamp in a reign of heaven’s glee

And dance a dance of innocence and youth

To free Real Me of being tossed and scattered

By the might and muscle of the sea

 

Gentle drum to beat retreat

From rainbow-land where heaven grew within

Up-tumble to the cavern of the eel

To meet my waiting Grandad, there to ease the journey onward

 

Into now

And give my heart its zest

Its beat

Its How

 

 

written by Sandra Dorey in 1995 and re-tweaked in 2016

© Sandra Dorey

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