RPS2 | Where I Holidayed as a Child

Ending Up Where I Holidayed as a Child

I mantled over the rocks

under the cliff

When I came here as a child

I was scared to walk too close

because of signs which suggested

(threatened)

that the ledge thirty meters above

might crumble on my head

I had no choice tonight,

at high tide

I couldn’t reach the rock itself,

too cold to swim, so I turned back,

scrambled over smoothed stones

and rock pools

Absent-mindedly, I remembered

a sunny day twenty years ago.

The rock pool water was so clear,

so still it was invisible.

so I jumped into it

and landed up to my waist

in surprise

None of these pools would even reach my adult knees

– jerked out of my reverie

by the festering corpse of a rabbit

who’d leaped thirty meters

from the cliff above

and crushed herself

on the wave-smoothed stones

I cried out in surprise

and two flies

escaped her ears

at my voice

Unsure what to do

I built her a cairn

and walked back to the beach

I sat on a stretch of sand

that was longer twenty years ago

I wrote her name with my finger in the sand

with an expletive

and watched the sun set

somewhere into the horizon

behind the two prongs

of the jagged necropolis.

Eagles Nest, Inverloch

Late September 2017