Hot day at the beach.
Blue sky and a hard sun,
softens now to haze of golden evening.
Skimpy girls twirl
in summer shimmerings,
and kiss-me colours,
while tanned boys
with sharp beards
point their chins in strutting play.
A medley of tongues,
and skins drift,
arm in arm, dreaming,
towards the pier’s westward end.
How beautiful we still are,
When our hearts transcend
the fear.
The Rivendale Review 
That’s great, Michael. A ‘Summer Special’ of a poem 😎
And that’s a cracker of a photo…
Thank you, Steve. Golden hour on Southport pier can be a real treat these summer evenings. I just wish I could catch the tide in a little more often, but that’s Southport for you.
Indeed! I remember it being in, right up to the road, once!
Loved the old proper train. The new one is okay, but not really the same experience
You evoke the scene, the heat, the senses so well.
Thank you. Following “current affairs” on the TV news or social media, we get this impression of a world divided and ugly and fearful, but I was at the beach one evening last week, taking in the last of the day, and it didn’t feel at all like that. It was beautiful.
The media focus on what divides us. No story in harmony.
Beautiful.
Thanks, George.
Thank you.
That is true Michael, when the fear is transcended there is nothing left but beauty.
A scene of my own;
The last train back from Southampton and the coast westwards beyond, to London.
The carriages packed with young flesh, and scant fabric covering.
A couple canoodling in the space for bicycles,
So I am in the way.
At a stop I climb down, and make a dash for the next carriage,
There I meet another cyclist.
His machine a modern racer, that defies gravity. ..
He has ridden half the length of the South Coast,
From his home, a London Suburb.
My machine, once a racer, now a utilitarian hack.
We the most respectably dressed around exchange stories and he remarks on my unusual load.
At Winchester there is uproar as the youngsters alighting
Flash their bottoms at those still on the train.
My journey ends at Streatham
When an unresponsive drunk refuses to leave a terminated train,
Which therefore blocks the line,
So I am cast out on to the South London Alps at midnight.
It was all good.
A kaleidoscope of vivid imagery from a very British kind of journey!
The sad truth though, that though we are all as much the same in the flesh as we are unique in spirit, we respect an imaginary difference with those from beyond the pier, beyond the coast. We all flock to the beach, but we can travel no further.
A strange irony.