It’s good, at times, to have grown old, though not
to ‘wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled’
but to be allowed to sit upon a fold up
picnic chair beneath a beach umbrella
and read – something, as a stilted youth,
I would have paid for if I’d had the dosh.
Now, between paragraphs, I watch, across
a quarter of a mile of sand, the family
paddle and swim. Suddenly, behind me,
the Christian Beach Team strikes up,
calling boys and girls and dads and mums
for an Adam and Eve tug o’war –
accompanied by much loud hailer cheer
and jovial misogyny – and then
a brief sermon followed by a hymn – ‘Floods
of joy o’er my soul like the sea billows roll,
Since Jesus came into my heart!’ – and I
begin to hear the waves’ far siren song
then note the family is returning
from the water’s edge as quickly as they can
and fear the little one has cut her toe
on a razor shell or been stung by
a lion’s mane jellyfish. But, no,
they have seen a dolphin – that Christian
symbol of amity and charity –
arching and diving, tearing through the waves,
finally heading out into the bay.
Now they’ve brought the good news to Grandpa
they go back, the little one running.
The Beach Team begins again – ‘Hear us, O Lord…’
– but I can only hear ‘mermaids singing,
each to each’ and can only imagine
the dolphin, that paragon, that non pareil
of the air, of the sea.
By David Selzer