Mascara Mac
19/03/24
It was an X-ray sky
with slate-sloped, timber-battened brambleside hills
sliding 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 while, the 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
A beach-towel sunsleep slips, flapping
beyond its kid-squawked nightmare
into a sea-trenched, channel fermented
foam-froth, flannel and firmament of fury
then:
the see-through chip-paper tutters us back
to the yattering, splattering wavelettes
tattling about the piers and jetsom jetties
wetting the burnished beach with pewter rainbows
in the scudding blue
Caught by Brownies, free as the breath
evaporating from her spectacle lenses…