Revised to meet Bernie's Spec.'Then I was by him, as one brought up with him:
and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before
him. Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth;
and my delights were with the sons of men.'
Prov. 8:30-31
After the war, when the minefields
were cleared and the barbed wire
rolled up from the beaches;
our mothers packed lunches
of strawberry jam and tomato
sandwiches in grease-proof paper
with the government allowance
of four fluid ounces of orange juice.
We followed the older girls
in their blue flowered frocks
in crocodiles up the sheep paths
to the tops of the sea-flung dunes
under the city on a hill:
Mynydd Dinas.
We crested the headland
where the American destroyer
had washed up on a lee shore,
resting rust red and forlorn;
a deckplate peeled off,
spars pointing to the clouds
bent like whalebone ribs.
We swam in the warm salt
breakers as the larks
called us from the
green rolling meadows.
We could but dance that day
glorying on the beach
of His creation.
end
