You Walk Along the Sandy Beach

You walk along the sandy beach
The grains crunch nosily beneath your feet
They shout and rave before the wave
Crashes down and washes back
To turn them over upside down
To jumble up and down and down and up
Causing chaos every time the water rolls
Into a wave to wash along across the sandy beach
Waiting till the tide does turn to quiet again
So the grain can settle down to snuggle up
To flatten out with just a ripple to be seen
To see the sea along the shore stretch to the clouds
From sand to sky and way beyond the sea the shore
Footprints in the sand says someone but it says who
Scrunchy sand beneath their feet before
They go blown away or smoothed by sea
Like an acquaintance meant to fade
Not like a friend that’s there for ever
Cemented into rock that lasts and lasts
Weathered down by rain and wind
And sea washed waves into the grains that
Tumble round in waves and land upon the shore
Rearranged at every tide they come and go
Ground down and thrown up into dunes
To blow away as wind does blow to
Slip and slide and scrunch no more
Away from sea and into land
The sand of time is running out
We wander here and wander there
Going somewhere know not where
Walking onward into the sky
Like sea and sand and shore

Inspired by The Dong with the Luminous Nose – Edward Lear. I think it was the two lines in the first stanza that did it,

” When the angry breakers roar, As they beat on the rocky shore”

Alistair J Parker
2nd July 2016