A Walk on Mersea Beach

I found myself as seldom found. I was alone,

Beneath my feet a tawny beach of sand and stone

And by my side there lay the dappled sea,

In which the sun had worked a mystery;

A thousand golden sparks in joyous dance,

And with them sails of white did flap and prance,

Man's happy answer to the sun's great toil,

White gems from man in nature's golden foil.

The heavens above were filled the sea gulls' call

With tales I did not understand at all.

And in my nose that sense which takes us back,

Was filled with tang of salt and rotting wrack.

With gentle breath upon my ageing face

I took from God an unexpected grace,

A joy He made for you and made for me.

It's nature's pure and sinless ecstasy.

Peter M. Grinham © 27^th August 2012

True Love

Too late I learned the nature of true love,

Discerned her subtle graces from above,

Not in the passion of a wild youth,

Or in man's obsession for the truth,

Not in his lust for games and manly sport,

Projects with cogs or bytes of any sort,

But in the essence of a mother's tears

The caring that defies the unsaid fears

The living for the other, not the self;

For them the centre and for us the shelf.

Peter M. Grinham © January 2012