The Beach Ball

THE BEACH BALL

A mother and father are to be seen on the beach
With them is a small boy with an inflatable ball
When he loosens his grasp the wind takes hold
It rolls the ball and with gathering speed hurls it seaward

Now the father is seen scurrying in chase
The ball rests in pools but as the father nears
a gust blows it on again over the rocks
The father can only follow after its flight

Gulls and guillemots and baby terns flee their sea- wracked rocks
as a panting dodging figure dances forward
The ball now wave-borne is floating slowly shoreward
Surely it will catch the sandbank of the shelving beach
to fall at last into the father's reaching arms

But the wind has the winning over the waves
Relinquishing the struggle the father returns
to console his son now playing with his mother
having already forgotten the bright beach ball

And when the wind in the morning has abated
Will the ball be found on some more southerly shore
to delight another child playing on the tideline
- a bright bouncing bonus to his holiday ?

Or will the wind have changed to anger the sea
and smashed the ball in the pounding of some crumbling cliff
its remnants joining the deathbed of a thousand shellfish
picked at by the early morning gulls.

© Gerald England

Composed: Bridlington, 2nd September 1979

Publications

1981 DADDYCATION (Ashton under Lyne, New Hope International)
1997 NASA (USA)

Haunted

HAUNTED

"The day that the rains came down"
This is the melody that has haunted me
since we first together to Bury went
I had hared over the Snake to see you
with just another weekend's courting on my mind
You asked me to take you to Bury via country lanes
It rained so hard I think I might have been drunk on the outside
The water fell flop flop from our coats
forming deep puddles in the thick pile carpet
of the jeweller's shop where a month's wage
disappeared in a diamond ring
We were engaged before I really knew
Everyone else was rushing round dodging between doorways
while we in a dream walked wet but not weary
Once we visited Bury in a warm October sun
buying clothes for our daughter
the day before she died
Our years of happy marriage don't rely on the sunshine
for it is the rain that has haunted the memory

© Gerald England

Composed: Bridlington, 6th June 1978

Publications

1981 DADDYCATION (Ashton under Lyne, New Hope International)
1986 White Rose (UK)
1995 REMEMBERING FORGETTING (Hull, Psychopoetica)