Empathy

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EMPATHY

(An Acrostic)

Emotions flow so deep

Making me want to weep,

Placing me in your shoes,

As you win or lose.

The pain you seem to bear,

How much it makes me care!

Your life is enmeshed with mine,

But a glance is the only sign.

*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LOOK HARD

I'm sure I'm in there, somewhere.

If I could weave my way between the bodies

I would find myself,

A skinny little girl

Playing with her cousins.

An English summer,

Brief and unreliable.

But, for us, long.

Because my family hired a tent from

May to September every year.

(All that 'hiring' meant

Was chalking one's name on the wall

Where the tent would go.)

We 'lived' on the sands.......

We never used the word 'beach'

In the nineteen thirties.

We would leave school at lunch time

To go down on the sands,

Where the mothers and aunties had prepared lunch.

Sandwiches on a little wooden table.

The mothers and aunties

Set aside their knitting.

They had been knitting our winter socks.

Sometimes the tide was high and we ate

With the water lapping round our feet.

That was oddly exciting.

At the weekends

We spent longer on the sands.

There were donkey-rides,

Maybe an ice-cream,

Maybe the excitement of being 'snapped'

By a beach photographer.

A swim was a test of endurance.

We would run into the water, squealing,

Then fling ourselves

Into bone-chilling iciness.

Once we were numb we could enjoy it.

Then there was the shivering as we dressed.

It was heaven.

There were always thousands of other people

Doing the same things.

Sometimes it was actually hot

And I would lie on a towel,

Letting the sun pierce my closed eyelids.

It was heaven.

I thought it would go on for ever.

But it was England.

It was 1939.

I know I'm in there.......

Somewhere.

*