LORRAINE MARWOOD
To Take A Torch
- and sift through night sand,
- to remember the daytime picnic
- the pimple of sandcastles,
- is to search
- a new, dark world
- frilled by surf light.
-
- Rigorous re-claiming
- of shell, seaweed, seagull
- is hardly illuminated
- in puny battery glow.
- The seawind is chanting
- seawrecks, tidal waves
- the teeth of sharkbitten flesh.
- Crabs and jellyfish
- no longer tickle and scurry
- but take savage bite.
-
- Yet still that torch
- stains a mucous trail
- of re-count, re-trace.
-
- Later, as the seawind
- discovers the caravan
- and the salt slimes
- the windows, my father
- will bring back the lost doll
- from the barbaric night,
- and I’ll sleep, counting
- the act as right
- the titpple world back on its axis,
- only realising now
- the act
-
as heroic.
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