Paleokastritsa
Floating on my back, looking at the sky.
Dancing my hands along the water's surface,
the lightest of touches, so gently;
feeling the sensation on the tips of my fingers.
I am dreamy, yet athrill; my absorption only unsettled by an occasional breeze.
Sun on my face, chest, the rest of me slightly submerged.
Fingers playing, delicately touching en pointe.
I stay for hours, on the edge of excitement;
executing and refining the exquisite watery caress.
Berry Head
Sitting a way back from the edge, a high promontory
(trembling still from having peered over the edge)
-a gull rises into view, noiselessly floating up above the cliff face on a current of air.
Not a sound, head swivelling, surveying.
Then others appear, wings outstretched and barely moving,
they slowly rise and fall between sky and the grassy chalk at the cliff's edge.
Silent, rapturous choreography.
Then: a beastly boy, a drone; all is scattered.
Puerto Pollensa
Waist deep, where the fish come to graze on calf and thigh, foot and knee,
softly brushing against my skin.
There are twenty, thirty, darting in and away.
I close my eyes, feel the sensation, then gaze at the tall pine trees lining the shore,
their fine tempting cones strewn along the walkway.
A dilemma.
Shivering, concerned to impress the feeling on the memory,
I stay with the fish until nightfall; then to the apartment with armfuls of cones.
Bognor Regis
Lying on the sea wall, looking out to the incoming mounds of water, trying to spot
which will become a big wave.
I follow the progress of one chosen, it gets nearer, undulating, swelling;
with a parade of its fellows it sweeps along the dilapidated groyne,
gulls lifting from each upright of the palisade and wheeling away...
the tip of the wave mounts, holds there, quivers, holds,
-expiration, it discharges...
Crashing on the shingle,
Crashing on the shingle...
rushing up the beach, momentum dissipating;
-inspiration: sucked back, raking, clawing desperately at the pebbles,
greedily gathering, before finally losing its form;
perhaps nonplussed at its brief existence, it is enfolded,
succumbing to unbearable undifferentiation.
Vale do Lobo
Twinkling lazuline, a shimmering olive grove,
the surrounding dull hill scrub punctuated by Cypress trees.
I grow sick of the gaudy bougainvillea, weary of the swaggering deckchair man.
Retreating to the villa, I jump from board to board,
avoiding the burning sand on my feet.
On each side: leathery skins, tattoos, sun oil, sunburn, immodesty, profanity.
Oh, to catch just a glimpse of a white, delicately-boned ankle;
a cold, fine-porcelain, slim, small, pale ankle.
By the cafe, on the other side of the wall, there is -invariably- a discarded
soft drink can in a rivulet of brownish liquid.
Then relief, blinds drawn, cold tiles underfoot.
Peter Jennings
Leslie, Scotland
August 2017
