Ending Up Where I Holidayed as a Child

I mantled over the rocks

under the cliff

When I came here as a child

I was scared to walk too close

because of signs which suggested

(threatened)

that the ledge thirty meters above

might crumble on my head

I had no choice tonight,

at high tide

I couldn't reach the rock itself,

too cold to swim, so I turned back,

scrambled over smoothed stones

and rock pools

Absent-mindedly, I remembered

a sunny day twenty years ago.

The rock pool water was so clear,

so still it was invisible.

so I jumped into it

and landed up to my waist

in surprise

None of these pools would even reach my adult knees

– jerked out of my reverie

by the festering corpse of a rabbit

who'd leaped thirty meters

from the cliff above

and crushed herself

on the wave-smoothed stones

I cried out in surprise

and two flies

escaped her ears

at my voice

Unsure what to do

I built her a cairn

and walked back to the beach

I sat on a stretch of sand

that was longer twenty years ago

I wrote her name with my finger in the sand

with an expletive

and watched the sun set

somewhere into the horizon

behind the two prongs

of the jagged necropolis.