Changes

For the last few days I have been trying to get all my jobs done to coincide with the low tide. The reason for this is that I have not had the time to go down to the beach. Its only two miles to the coast from our home. I have been banging on to Steve that I want to go down and explore the shingle bank that first appeared about two and a half years ago after a ferocious string of autumn storms. It rose like a small island that was about 8’ high at the tallest point, and that point was not the furthest out from the beach either. Since it has been there I have wandered over it many times when the tide was out.

 

This winter we have had a repeat of the chain of storms, sometimes ten days apart and other times and endless stream of coastal batterings. The most recent was Storm Katie. Katie was not a quick one day of wind and rain, Katie lasted for almost a week what with her build up of violent winds before hand and then a solid blasting of our shores ditching shingle all over the sea front road. The major show of temper from the show off creature was that the huge shingle bank seems to have been dug out at one side and slapped down again so that now it adjoins the beach. 

Today has been breezy but we have been blessed with warmth and plenty of sunshine that had dried one load of washing and I had pegged a second load out on the line. So this afternoon, once ahead of my chores, I packed a notebook and pen into my shoulder bag along with a camera and got into the car to drive down to the pool car park that is directly opposite the point where my beloved shingle bank lays. I drove the couple of miles to the beach where I saw what I thought was a big thunder storm approaching from the west. Huge slate grey clouds moving in rapidly. Very rapidly, the wind was picking up well too.

“Bum” I said out loud. I had of course left the washing out because it was a lovely day when I left home ten minutes before. I had brought the book I’m reading down with me and thought I would sit in a café and read for half an hour when I had finished my exploration. No chance of that. 

I had no choice but to beetle off back home, and thinking that if I had not sat and written the following poem before leaving I would have got my amble over the newly changed bank. I have been thinking about this subject for a while. It is not just a piece of imagination although imagination does come into it. Local people will know who I am thinking of.

 

Phantom Horses 

He can hear the muffled beating of their hooves

On the soft all weather track, that much is certain

See the jockeys on their backs cantering up there

From his side line spot through a misty curtain 

Every word is true that is said about old habits

He cannot hold back his died in the wool routine

Cold park morning where walkers dogs chase rabbits

He still sees the groomed race horses’ coats gleam 

Trainer through and through of die hard spirit

Ingrained knowledge of horses and riders

A life spent on the course railings to cheer it

For the rich owners are his income providers 

Emotions held inside like a horse on the bit

Relentless pain brings him back each day to sigh

As a phantom thoroughbred causes a ghostly draft

He lives through a lifetimes work now gone by