Caroline Gill
Tide Fight
We filled a pudding basin to the brim,
upended it to leave a sandcastle of flour.
All eyes were on the sixpence on the rim:
the music died away - we knew the score.
My best friend rose, with spatula in hand,
to slice the castle. Flour fell to the floor:
the sixpence shook like cymbals in a band.
The record spun, then died: my turn to do
the deed, and shake my heritage to sand.
We passed the spoon, and cheered: how could we know
that coastal thrones were conquered long ago?
I found a polished pebble in the bay,
where fishermen played games from battered boats,
with bags of flour and soot. Regatta Day
was always fun, with crab sticks, choir and floats.
My pebble, like the flour, had known the waves
that ripple through a field of sea or oats.
It started life as molten rock, when sheaves
of folding soil began to form: but time
as tide's chronometer ticks on, engraves
its notches deep in veins of serpentine.
Land falls like strands of spindrift through the brine.
upended it to leave a sandcastle of flour.
All eyes were on the sixpence on the rim:
the music died away - we knew the score.
My best friend rose, with spatula in hand,
to slice the castle. Flour fell to the floor:
the sixpence shook like cymbals in a band.
The record spun, then died: my turn to do
the deed, and shake my heritage to sand.
We passed the spoon, and cheered: how could we know
that coastal thrones were conquered long ago?
I found a polished pebble in the bay,
where fishermen played games from battered boats,
with bags of flour and soot. Regatta Day
was always fun, with crab sticks, choir and floats.
My pebble, like the flour, had known the waves
that ripple through a field of sea or oats.
It started life as molten rock, when sheaves
of folding soil began to form: but time
as tide's chronometer ticks on, engraves
its notches deep in veins of serpentine.
Land falls like strands of spindrift through the brine.
Page(s) 21-22
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