Nor East Coast 2020

Caravans front the sea like gritted teeth Steeling for the storms that winter brings Incongruously named Sahara, Rio, Granada, Burgandy The caravans are ringed by gorse, rosehips and fuschia Pebbles instead of lawns, with bonsai plants Tom Thumbs like torn butterflies Flap in the bitter breeze In the sea, kelp belly flops The colour of khaki Like army webbing steeped ten days in mud Waves unroll like bandages Jellyfish sprawl in their wake Wobbily and stranded Like scooped out brains The sea veins run like marble Breakers are shattering glaciers White as Himalayan peaks Rocks, pitch back when wet Barnacle grey when dry An exotic clump of alfafa Massing waves mauraud the shuddering beach Like norse invaders Sea winds have bleached and peeled a wooden fence In the roar and chop of the tide Terns wing-surf the wind Shards of coral loll in the waves' hammock A hermit crab pokes tentative pincers out Dogs pee in the childrens'park Strain on extended leashes Swings creak under toddlers'puppy fat The sandpit launches many fantasies A rescue helicopter putters overhead Perhaps to rescue a climber from the cliff Or hoist aloft the lost from sinking dinghy Caught in a rip tide amateur jack tars The sea is the quern that grinds the rocks To pebbles the shells to sand On its spar of out-flung rocks Like a crocodile back, A gull's on the lookout for fish This year the Costa Brava's off the menu No toasting British buttocks to a turn On Rhodes or Crete or sunny Barcelena Like bladderwrack, seaweed, All of us at the whim of the tide And through it all, children come whooping and laughing With fire in their heels Little red dragons, embracing the world's wonders