Normans Bay
The day is bright enough
but wisps away at the edges
into cirrus cloud.
A rare enough space in our lives:
here with you
in this ramshackle seaside town.
If we were mid-life rebels,
dumped our commitments, hid
away in a chalet on the beach,
would our free-fall of pleasure
bring us what we seek?
From the sea wall we can
look down on a camp site
where parents sit talk laugh drink
and infants play
round them like midges.
And if our bodies were tanned
as leather, and our lives
were red wine and barbecues,
and you frizzed your hair
and drove an open top car,
would everything come right?
Our daughter’s late,
her mobile phone won’t respond.
You sigh, your eyes
two pinpoints of sun in dark glasses.
And we look around
at those powder blue distances
- the silhouette of Beachy Head,
the shimmering stillness of the Levels –
like children, expecting answers.
Page(s) 41
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The