Tony Lucas
Summer, 1945
A small boy on a beach
that stretches to the sky.
No one else in sight. He is
studying the scratches
marked out by his spade, absorbed
in learning the way water
fills up holes in sand.
Only the camera watches him.
It is the earliest holiday
he will remember, first taste
of seaside - paddling in shallows,
treading corrugated sand
to prod the stranded jellyfish,
discover curled pink shells.
Streaked slabs of concrete line
the shore. There is a war
still finishing somewhere, and he has yet
to meet his father. During the months
ahead, there will be soldiers
coming home, school with hard
playgrounds, babies being born.
This is not a place they’ll come
on holiday again. Yet
he’ll retain a sense of safety
in the emptiness, a clearing sky,
before the coming of what
they called ‘peace’, but which
meant something else for him.
Page(s) 46
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