Gronant
Most of my time was spent making friends with sand dunes,
scrambling up their shoulders and jumping off their heads.
At night I had to sleep in a guards van. Windowless. Bunk beds.
Better beds were in the Crosville single-decker. You could sit
in the driver’s seat grasping the steering-wheel and pretend
you were travelling somewhere else.
Year-by-year our home-from-homes buried their axles in sand.
I remember a small boat lying upside-down on the beach.
I don’t remember crawling underneath.
I don’t remember barnacles, just a wavy keel.
Intimations of a mirage effect.
Photos show me frowning at my plimsolls
with unnamed playmates looking on. Another shows me
caught between jump-off and land.
Deserts have defined me all my life.
Love the first two lines and the emotional depth of the poem. The third line left me imagining holidays in a railway siding, then in a bus depot. In the line ‘Year-by-year…’ should it be ‘its axles’? Not sure about ‘unnamed playmates’. Might ‘nameless playmates’ be better. Sad ending.
Thanks, Keith. Been fiddling with it all day – which is an improvement on all the other poems entitled Gronant that I’ve abandoned! It was a quadrangle of ramshackleness – bungalow, two guards vans, bus and stinky loo. Maybe I should get that in the poem!
Wonderful depth to the poem. I love the ending. I don’t see it as sad as, for me, deserts are places of retreat and inspiration. Also love the sand dune shoulders.