Autumn Evening Saunton Sands

Where once September’s footfalls crimped an idle track from here to there and

nowhere the advancing October wash now dutifully filled each moat and raised each

castle; flattening each bounding hound hoof and flap of flip flop to a single flooding

plain of gold. The porcelain sky cracked as the sun’s kiss goodnight left a blushing

stain across the ocean’s rim and the line of dry foaming cappuccino tide marks

reanimated in the wake of breakers. Here today memories past danced with dreamed

desires. Their dress tails and heel turns traced by racing sand grains chased by the last

breath of summer from bunkered machine gun dug-outs, dunes and hidey holes to

skirmish with the invading Atlantic air. And then when at last the plimsoll line of salt

snotty urchins that crabbed and clung to ragged molars melted with the last of the

light, the parched tongue of Saunton Sands could gasp relief from the day.

© Paul Mackenzie