My young sea

I remember it green and tired,
as it lazed over limestone, miring grey white.
The swell, lurched slowly, guzzled whole
afternoons with each rise and fall.
The quiet slop slap in an empty cove,
rock upon limpet rock, a windless shore.
It is a sea that eats emptiness like a glutton,
never sated, swallows time,
lands me like driftwood to the beach,
to watch hour after thoughtful hour.
Why do grey skies make for green seas?

I remember it raging. Hurling suicidal
at the sea wall, punching ponderous like an ageing
heavy weight. I felt the ragged thump
through my feet, through concrete,
heaving its recklessness into body and soul.
Elation followed awe, thrilled looks exchanged
and hearts wound to a pitch, muscles tight
like an over excited bouncing child.
Water, seaweed, rocks gushed up and over,
spat like a dying curse, flung by a sibilant spray
which, loosing it’s load, drifts and drenches.

I remember it in calm summer evenings
rowing across the bay past emptying beaches,
against a mirrored sun glancing silver
with each gentle tilt of the boat.
Blades cut into the buoyant blue
blemishes like swirling jellyfish.
Tourist boats soaked us with warm wash,
sloshed up over riggers.
Back into the ice cream crowded harbour,
salted, sweat caked, justly sunburnt,
cold beer quenched the sea’s thirst.

I remember it like childhood scent.
The knot that pulls at creosote, fir trees,
my father’s begonias, fresh picked apples.
It is the sea’s knot that pulls at me.
I ride the tide of my young sea.