Mermaid Beach at Dusk
On a night like this,
The Cote d’Opale
Might as well be
A thousand miles away.
Sky and sea present
An ashen canvas.
It is impossible to tell
Where one ends
And the other begins.
Barely a whisper from the surf tonight.
Even Matthew Arnold’s
“Grating roar of pebbles”
Is indecipherable,
So faint is nature’s refrain.
I am minded that across town,
Above Tontine Street’s old post office
A neon sign proclaims that
“Heaven is a place
Where nothing ever happens”.
And nothing is happening tonight
In this particular speck of paradise.
But then everything is happening.
Just visible along the beach,
The lighthouse blinks through
The thick, enfolding gloom;
A tuneless, forsaken church bell,
Hangs silently suspended above
Where once stood rotunda, swimming pool,
Boating lake and fairground rides.
A cockapoo puppy snuffles among
The seaweed encrusted pebbles
While its fretful owner punctures the peace
With impassioned and fruitless pleas
To accompany her back
To the refuge of her Range Rover
Parked at the foot of the desolate lift.
An empty tuna mayonnaise
Sandwich carton flutters
In the breathless breeze beside
Folkestone’s modest imitation
Of Avebury stone circle.
A lone fisherman plants tripod and rod
On the forgotten beach,
Reminding me of all night sessions
On otherworldly Dungeness shingle
With my teddy boy “Uncle Len”
And Eddie Cochran and Elvis on the radio,
More than sixty years ago.
The overwhelming flatness
Has deterred the customary
Photographic shooting party
From assembling to capture
That final, ferocious blaze
Of orange, purple, red and gold
Over Sandgate’s adjacent shore.
But tomorrow morning, life will return,
Children will again sprint into the sea,
Mindless of the sharp shells and shingle
That scrape and bruise their fragile feet;
And they will crave the comfort of towels
And the sanctuary of new beach huts.
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Tony Quarrington 