'ROCK, NORTH CORNWALL': A POEM ABOUT RETURNING TO A CHILDHOOD HAUNT...

 Rock, North Cornwall…

It was the silence,

Like I had returned 

From death

To retrace my boyhood steps, 

On soft sand and pale dunes;

The undulating bed

Of the River Camel’s estuary

Disguised the channel’s depths.

It was the essence,

Like I had grasped 

From memory

To recover my childhood joy,

On drifting sand and marram grass;

The menacing current

Of the eerie shifting waters,

Disguised a clever ploy.

It was the absence,

Like I had desired 

From truth

To retrieve my boyhood innocence

On yielding sand and shallow tide;

The unrelenting ebbing

Of the waterway’s languid shuttles,

Disguised my mind’s ambivalence.

Pete Ray

Rock wasn’t really like ‘the seaside’ for me as a kid, being mainly dunes along a bank of the River Camel’s estuary…

And there was always the threat of my Auntie Ivy and my mum wanting to cross the estuary to the shops in Padstow…

Not good…