Heave and spew with every wave
Are fixed above my head
Banks of sand, clots of gravel
Two million-years adrift
Are rolling at my feet
Same old, same old
Dunwich Cliff, Dunwich Beach:
The poetry of sediment remains
I can no longer dot the i’s, nor cross the t’s. A pale haze, like Sunday afternoons, pleasant after a glass of wine too many, drifts across my day. I am at peace. I find myself disposed to acquiesce, content to live life at this gentle pace, content, it seems, with how life’s focus, now diminished, takes on the softened blur of evening light. Something sharp is lost. But the time for mourning it is done. The wind that swelled the sails has dropped, the tide recedes, the fierceness of the sun is quenched, leaving the sunshine’s golden glow that speaks the lateness of the hour. A taste of salt upon my lips - no call for worry or regrets - a bitter-sweet recall of what has gone. Julia Duke