Mascara Mac

It was an X-ray sky

with slate-sloped, timber-battened,

brambleside hills

That slid down a slack house, cracked house

and tarp-wrapped slope to the sea

Wire rope rusted and reeled through the crickety grass

and mascara black spatter smiled

on her holiday cheeks

The sand-borne icecream-wrapper wind

played with her short, black

plastic mac flaps

The plum-ripened sun

has licked your ice-cream

And the beach is a soft bed-spread

arching past castled sands

Warm as tweed, flat as whippet caps

hand-spilled and inviting

On a beach-towel sunsleep slips

flapping beyond its kid-squawked nightmare

Into a sea-trenched, channel fermented

foam-froth flannel, And

a firmament of fury, then:

The sand-trapped chip-paper

tutters us back...

...To the yattering, splattering wavelettes

tattling about the piers and jetsom jetties

Wetting the burnished beach with pewter rainbows

mapping each islet and puddle

in the plashing, shushing scudding blue

Caught by Brownies, free as the breath

evaporating from her spectacle lenses…