By Jack Dawson

I went once, in wet sandals 

to a stupid sea I used to watch. 

Atop a bluff, the daylight 

chewed to pieces, to slivers, to threads. 

I wrote a dull phrase  

‘I’d rather drown a thousand times,’ 

‘Than swim my tide alone.’ 

but it made you smile. 

Still later, I forgot it. 

Years later, down at the jetty 

where the kiosk sings its pastel tune 

I tried to spot you. 

In splashes, in sea-breeze, in sunburn 

and hours later, at high tide 

on uncertain waves rolled a night. 

‘Some mistake of mine,’ I reply. 

That summer, that pink scene  

I lit the engine and let that stupid sea 

do its own thing.