Walk to the Shore

Walk To The Shore
Crunch on the pebbles
Step over the stones
Cross the neat grass
Lift the latch
Hear the squeak
Rattle the chain
Think of a harness
Back on the hook
Make sure it’s closed

Mind the cow pat
Follow the dyke
A wiggly path
Winds down the hill
This way and that
Spot the odd rabbit
There used to be more

Hear the sweet singing
What did it say
Bread with no cheers it repeats all the day
Yellow and noisy it hammers a song
One step more, keep going along
Notice the orchids
Notice some more

The little brown berries
In piles everywhere
Left by the bunnies
Left everywhere
Look there’s a burrow
Deep down in the ground
Home for a rabbit
Home in the ground

Taste the blackberries
All warm lush and round
Sun always shining
It shines every day
Over the stile now
Sweet smell of hay
It’s still early morning
Best time of the day

There is the sea
We’re nearly there
Through the rough grass
Mind the gorse spikes
Sloes in abundance
Lovely with gin
See the sand, close now
The smell of the sea

Clack through the pebbles
All tumbling down
Look for the white ones
Look that’s one there
Feel the sand crunchy
On feet that are bare
Look it's Man Friday
A footprint is there

Hear the waves crashing
Up onto the rocks
Skim the stones seaward
Bounce off the waves
Hear the shrill call
The birds of the sea
A Peewit is calling
Plaintive and haunting

Memories flow
This magical place
I once loved to go
I feel a tear forming
The memory is dear
Seems a long time
Since I have walked there

This is the first poem I wrote. I was driving to University and in a nostalgic moment I visualised the walk to to the shore that was such an important part of childhood holidays. I desperately tried to keep the words in my head so that I could write them down as soon as I stopped.The poem was inspired by the walk from the Barracks, my paternal Grandfathers in SW Scotland, down to the shore, a path of about 600 yards. The Barracks, a partly ruined stone built farmhouse, was situated at a place called Auchenmalg, at the head of Luce Bay, the south westerly tip of Scotland in the then county of Wigtownshire, now Dumfries and Galloway, on the side of a hill looking towards the Isle of Man, which you could see on a clear day. The place derived its name from its former usage as a place to house the local militia who kept an eye open for smugglers The path down to the shore was a magical pathway into a new and exciting world that tingled the senses with new sounds and smells It was a place I visited every year for 16 years and is a place to which I still have to return.

Alistair Parker
2nd December 2013