rain tomorrow

Now seems like a good time to start a new set of poems/songs under the title 'rain tomorrow' taken from one of my poems, Reculver Beach. I took the cover picture at Minster Leas last year.

Reculver Beach

The rough leather of a dog fish skin

Spiry and age-spotted into dry seaweed

Scratching on the soles of our shoes

And a perfect crab shell, legs and all

Hollowed out by the tide

Soft parts long since departed

Now weeping scales of salt onto our palms

Bleached shells and smooth pebbles

Picked from a beach pocked with horned poppy

As we walk beyond the reach of the sea

And all along the Viking Way they cycle

Flat out, fast and free

Billowing their hair with a windy brine

From Wigmore and wherever

In serious pursuit of leisure

Here now, the old flint walls

Flinching under a blue sky

As starlings form a chorus line

High up on the rafters of the old towers

To entertain us with a song and dance

From some bawdy, birdy music hall

Reviewing the late summer sky

This weather cannot last

Rain tomorrow

And they will give one last bow

Then exit left for winter

And all along the Viking Way we walk

Dawdling at the view

Of giant windmills out to sea

And trains and tractors

Pulling the flat land taught

Below a winnowed sky

We reach the car park

Just time for a drink and a snack

This weather cannot last

They say it'll rain tomorrow

And we comment, again, on the cormorants

Fishing from the posts in pairs

And if they were young egrets we saw in that tree

And we give one last bow to the beach

While checking our shoes
Then exit left for the motorway