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Clogerhead Afternoon
The tide was out at Clogherhead
Down below the scrub and sandflowers
The flattened epidermis of the shore
Lay exposed, bared by the scalpel
Of an invisible moon, children played on it
Gray trousered and pink frocked
Kicked balls, clambered around rock pools
The magnet of the receding tide attracting them
To jettisoned wreckage of the sea
As it did us, salt on our fingers
Seagulls in our hair
Here and there the jellyfish came in
Perfect disks, their internal structures
Obscenely visible through translucent skin
Floating to harbor in the sand
One unawares, carried a mollusk to its mooring
Continuing, the sand flats fled moistly away
To the place where white wavelets fringed into them
Like lace on a dancer’s bodice
Wetly undressed, the beach revealed its secrets
Scuttled crab carcasses, balloon-like shells
Fragile as sucked eggs, castles of sea worm dribbles
Intestinal homes of dark muddy mystery
Close by, waving fronds of one-legged crustacean
Ballerinas upended in the sand, beckoned us
To pluck them or dig them out to find out
Why they had buried their heads
Far out along the mossy rock line a crowd of gulls gathered
White customers at a popular sea food takeaway, they waited
To be served; behind them, tall and dignified, a cormorant
Stepped carefully across the backdrop of the waves
As we approached the gulls flew off in a shower of wings
Leaving the cormorant, a deserted monarch, to survey
His emptied court
And what a courtyard it was! Strewn with abandoned treasures
Spiraled curving shells with rushing music in their ears,
Glistening pebbles, their histories etched into them
Like signatures on Chinese paintings, polished by
Centuries of underwater currents to multicolored perfection
The tide was inching in at Clogherhead
Lapping to reclaim its sovereignty over the sand
The cormorant, dethroned, stretched its wings and body
To fly over the trees as we, clutching our booty,
Retreated to our car to warm ourselves
Against the chilling breeze
© Johnmichael Simon
2007
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