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Edward Cummins

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Thurso Beach

The breakers roll, long cigarettes of foam
bound over one another in a crash
of smoke that disappears with sounding boom
to crumple, paper-thin, into the wash.

The desert wide, the winter cold expanse
of beach is host to two white dogs and girls
who mark the sand with tiny feet and prints
of paws that melt away in surface pools.

I wish I was a fisherman and young
and gone to Greenland in a long-line boat.
A bottleful of whiskey and a bunk
and codfish days bliss-ignorant with hope.

The people and the animals are gone.
The waves roll in relentlessly. The tide,
like life, continues, ebb and flow. The sun
that did not show a face today has fled.

There is no long-line boat, nor can our youth
come back to us a newly laundered shirt.
The day is spent in counting grains of faith:
no more nor less than what our lives are worth.

 

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