Blazing beaches
I see the white horses gallop up to the shore. Their frothy manes alive in the chilling wind. They break against the beach sinking back into the mystical depths. Then as if resurrected from the dead, they come rushing back, intent on their goal. Today there is no carelessness about the waves.
The pebbly beach I lie on is full of stones of every shape and
size. The sun warms many patches of fine rock, almost like powdered fire. Yet
amid this heat are pieces of sharp, cold flint, like a sinner among angels.
As I am lying there I gaze up at the oceans above, dotted with white candyfloss, and like that sold at the side of the beach. Then the sun dazzles me and the heat beats on my face.
I turn my head to the side and my attention is drawn to a beautiful shell, its markings like a speckled egg and the smooth curves appear to twist round and round forever. But this is merely a discarded fraction of the creature, which once lived inside. The shell had been its home, its shelter and its protection against the rest of cruel nature.
Protection against the birds, like the seagull screaming above me, like a tortured soul, gliding on the wind and flapping against the evening breeze. It swoops towards the remnants of a family picnic and makes a feast of it. Cheekily snatching a crust from a bin. The white cliffs loom above me. The eyes of the past, reflecting the fading sun as it sets and drowns in the never-ending sea.
How can I sit here, relaxed? When there is still war, still hunger, still greed.
Now the white horses rear and buck, crashing haphazardly, reminding me that other waves lap distant shores that are not so fortunate. There the skies are always blue. There the sun beats down and warms the hard clay where nothing can be planted. The ocean above gives out no water, so their shore remains dry. People are without their shells; without a home; without shelter; without protection. They are a fractured part of themselves.
It isn't the seagulls that screech from torture there, it is the starving, dying souls.
The only thing that looms above them is the inevitable fact that tomorrow won't bring anything better. Their past, their present and their future are the same. Their only enemy is us and they are defenceless against our rules. Suddenly the wind bites at me, the stones feel cold, hard, and prickly. Impossible to feel comfort.
