Autumn Evening Saunton Sands

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