Windswept Promenade arcing into the mist to greet the sea
Its course mirrored by the uninhabited beach,
Hibernating deck chairs and loungers caged in pens
Coloured Yachts docked away from winter winds
Shuttered kiosks gazing eyeless out to the slate- grey sea
Watched by tankers and container ships sliding silently by
Like grey whales in a colourless frieze
Gulls wheeling - emitting mournful oboe-like cadences
Hardy walkers marching against the wind, peppered by rain,
Raindrops slaloming down windows in deserted cafes
Sitting in my car sipping steaming soup
I see in the veiled windscreen
The ghosts of laughing children, playing in the sand
Building castles and moats against the tide
Avidly licking cornets and candy floss
Girls in bikinis and kiss-me-quick hats,
Soaking up the warming sun
Granddads paddling in rolled-up trousers
Proudly sporting their knotted handkerchiefs
But the vision is gone with a single wiper blade,
Revealing a colourless scene, silent as a tomb
But, as in life, there is the belief in Easter and Spring
Of resurrection - new life bursting forth with colour and vitality
Warm summer day, snoozing in the lounger
Tabloid images of war in Iraq
Mutilated bodies, staring eyes, women and children
Reveries of an innocent childhood
Another summer day, azure sky, speckled with cotton wool clouds
The sudden roar of a distant plane
Pilotless, flames spitting from the tail
Mother watching anxiously - praying to keep it flying
In the distance the engine cuts, the doodlebug arrows down
A loud explosion and a plume of smoke
I grip mothers hand in fear and relief
A grey November day surveying our street
A fifth birthday with brand-new presents
Two clockwork lorries and furry red slippers
Opposite the one vacant house bombed
Like a broken tooth in a denture set
Snow covered Surrey fields, a strange village school
Christmas party at the Squires stately mansion
Sight-seeing the crashed Messerschmidt nesting in bracken
The air still and silent, disproving the war
The cavalcade of bloodshed marches relentlessly by
Berlin, Hiroshima, Korea and Vietnam,
Congo, Kenya Beirut and Falklands
Kuwait Ruanda Somme and Iraq.
Encompassing strange unknown places, suddenly infamous
A war to end wars- the politicians proclaim
But Man’s inhumanity knows no borders and no end
