East Beach, Nairn, 27 May 2018
You came out to find a poem,
To rekindle something in yourself
Among the dunes
Of Nairn’s East Beach
That vast expanse of beige sand
Where they trained for D-Day
In bloodless attacks
Before low bluffs
Fringed with gorse.
Nothing untoward here today,
The usual flotsam and jetsam,
And the obliterated remains
Of a billion molluscs,
Dismembered crustaceans,
Strewn about the beach.
A landscape arranged
In abstracted coastal hues:
Coffee, magnolia, aquamarine.
A sky of impeccable blue.
A view positively Caribbean
But for a brute easterly
Blasting across the sand.
You walk towards its source,
Fierce roar rushing
Into your ears.
A few families toughing it out,
Huddled under canvas
Beside windbreakers,
Wading in the frigid shallows.
Whitsun worshippers
Oblivious to the wind.
Lone walkers,
The odd stray dog,
And two kiteboarders.
One already in the water,
Curving a white wake
In the deep channel
Carved into the sand.
Another,
A woman,
Kite unfurled,
Struggling to take her horse
To water,
The wind
Having other ideas:
To draw her to the dunes,
Tear the lines
From her clenched fist,
Send her sailing
Across the town.
Tilting at 45 degrees
She has her toes in
As you walk by,
Making for the point,
Where sand meets mud
And you know
You’ve gone far enough.
Answering a call of nature
You piss into the wind,
Watch it blow away from you,
And bead on the grains.
By the time you turn
She has made it:
Both boarders are cresting
The little inlet's surface,
Kites hovering over them
Like a question mark,
A thought.
An aura.
A soul.
Shuttling and twisting
On the dazzling water,
They could be dancing
To Strauss, or Ravel.
They could be dancing.
Yeah.
Passing once more
You find your footprints,
Retrace your steps
Press on for home.