Sea Change
With it, went all the layering; stuff we pretended was important.
By Alan Kent
We'd been told before, warned before, but we took no notice of that advice.
That year, the beaches were empty. No bright dinghies bobbed on the tide.
Too many people, too much self, too much consumption, too little care.
The surfers were told please don't come and the B&Bs shut their doors.
And so the ocean and cliffs were put in a cupboard and locked away,
They got turned around at the Tamar. They got asked to stay at home.
until we had learnt our lesson, until we promised to play nice. Arrogance would no longer do. We'd have to face ourselves.
The strand remained untouched, and no castles were formed from the sand.
The world did its quiet cleansing and helpless, we looked on. On social media, all we could do was to share photographs of past waves
Things reverted to how they once were and you could hear the birds sing again.
and wish that things had stayed the same: that viral beads would simply disappear.
Somewhere, the world had decided that a change was on the cards.
Much was hoped for, much was said, a quick furloughed fix and that's it;
It was to do with the way we treated it. We assumed so much, took so much always.
this, despite confined sea-nymphs still loudly ringing their chosen knell.
We let rare species fall as lost grains of sand, and tossed plastic beads into the spume.
Alan Kent, who lives in Probus, is a Cornish poet, dramatist, novelist, editor and academic. He is the author of a number of works on Cornish and Anglo-Cornish literature.
One day, it had enough and said no more and so the sea got taken away: quarantined. 19
