298. Grey Wind.

                            Clare Gascoigne

As you would expect our long, hot summer days are usually just that....long and hot. But not today.

GREY WIND.

Today the wind was grey.

On most summer days here

 The wind is silver.

It blows off the sea

Piling up avalanches of foam,

Great cream puffs of it,

Whirling towards us,

The skiiers balanced precariously aloft.

But today the wind was grey.

On most summer days here

 The sky aches with blueness.

Bleached gulls like leaves,

Toss and swirl.

The distant waves

Are shards of hot glass,

Dancing.

But today the wind was grey.

On most summer days here,

We seek shade,

Sliding in under a sheltering wall

To drink cold lemonade from a flask.

Even the shadows glow with warmth.

Ecstatic babies are zinced and hatted,

And warned.

'The sun will get you if you don't watch out!'

But today the wind was grey.

It blew off the land to the west of us.

It had travelled over the Great Divide,

Picking up moisture as it came.

Now it waits, a purple premonition;

There will be a storm tonight.

It will be an Australian storm.

Yet the grey wind has been

The wind of the English Channel.

I am a child again,

Dancing in and out of those miniscule waves,

Until my feet go numb.

I must be rubbed dry,

Briskly.

Babies run naked;

The cruelty of the sun

Has not yet been discovered.

And the wind is always grey

Today I walked along the edge of the sea,

A chiffon scarf

Trailing behind me,

Or so it seemed.
A dove-grey scarf.

For today the wind was grey.