The ocean took its share –

Call it coastal erosion

If you wish –

And swept the soft away;

Bedrock pillars stood tall

Unaware of their solitude

And pointlessness

Hard-faced against the tide;

And winds slide shards

Like the paper cuts we felt

Trace lattice lines inside

The bruises no-one else can see;

Saved from the roughness out at sea

Our chains our punishment

For wanting more

Abandoned now to the birds;

Tossed like an unmade bed

Or pummeled like an insomniac pillow

The ocean unerring in its mission

A statement to the landscape

Retreating by inches

Its children lost to the low

Hidden beyond the sea-fog which sweeps

Like convulsive currents

Pretending all is new – a clean mind;

Breaking up or breaking down

The oceans takes us all –

Call it coastal erosion

If you wish –

With vacant smiles

And drooling delusion

It takes us all.

©…

Image by Christine Renney

When it happened they were away from home. The smell was so invasive that, for a moment or so, Harris was unsure of where he was. Lifting the thin sheet he looked down at himself and at Geraldine, sleeping soundly on her side. He remembered then that he was in a hotel room in Paris and although the smell didn’t lessen it did suddenly seem a little more bearable. He was abroad, in a foreign country and this was something alien.
Convincing himself that it was coming from outside he slipped from the bed, careful not to wake Geraldine, crossed to the glass doors and stepped out onto the tiny balcony. It had been raining, the air was still fresh and the street below was still wet. In the cars’ headlights the moist air glinted.
The smell didn’t dissipate and at first he couldn’t locate it…