Mum, dad, my sister: deckchairs on the sand,
dozing and dreaming, deep into paperbacks.
I sidle off into a hinterland
of huddled pubs and chip shops. Tarmac tracks
take me past pool rooms, penny arcades,
beach balls, bikinis and bathing shacks,
ice cream emporia, cheap colonnades
of empty restaurants, forlorn cafés,
sea-life aquaria, and stunted glades
of palm trees pining for hotter days.
Then, on a greener path, I leave the town,
follow the bay’s curve through a grey-green haze
of spiky marram grass, a shifting brown
massif of dunes, make for the modest height
of Potter’s Hill, where I fling myself down
on the cropped turf, in the sun’s sinking light:
feel burning solace, like the release of art,
find airy freedom in the seagull’s flight;
and something captive in my twelve-year heart
breaks out of childhood — now an age apart.
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