A Xmas Pre-prandial

Whiskies, one scotch and one bourbon
lie cheek by jowl and
not a yard away a vodka

The bottles distinguishable only
by their distinctive shapes
Johhny Walker
Jack Daniels and
Smirnoff - Nikolai?

Discarded and empty
labels washed away by tides
tops that were thrown away
long ago are nowhere to be seen

Four by fours and
four by twos huddle
atop each other

timber from beach side constructions
huts and deck chair parlours
bars and bar fronts
cast adrift by winter storms
the white paint leaking through the blue

Gobs of polystyrene with
drifts of phenol snow
blowing on the wind

Beside them globs of
thick black crude oil
rinsed from tankers returning
through the Med
and dead seagulls washed up
crucified for Xmas
by the season

ropes and olive nets
bleached by the deep
lay disarrayed along the tide line
discarded or lost?

the sun skirts
just above the mountains
to our backs and lights the tops
of the wavelets smacking on the strand

it warms our backs
and heads
and our hearts
it lights the sand dunes
picking out the twitches of grass and
empty never rotting plastic water bottles
a summer's worth of waste

the girls run freely
on long ropes snaking out
from our hands
snapping sharply taut now and then
ropes found here
washed up detached from bouys and nets that
litter the beach further along
by the river
where the girls pause briefly to drink
of the sweet cold water
trickling down from the mountains

and every few metres
another palm frond or
an olive trunk or
branch or
plane tree leaf and
cuttle fish skeleton

they all cast up here
disfiguring the pristine beaches so
beloved by the tourists
making them ours again
in all their tawdry beauty

the hotels and
the beach bars
all closed
just us
our dogs
and
xmas day