Lying on the beach, back so aching,
so pain-shawled,
so archangel-wing-substantial,
I hardly know how
to lie
to make it bearable.

I have automatically adopted childbirth pose.
Ironic?
No need to suppose -
though I could blame yoga class if you prefer.
Those knees cricketed
and legs veed
yield nothing more substantial
than seascape striation.  Yet somehow, pain begins to dissipate

peeling off         in layers.

Layers of colour are pyramidically-inversed,
Louvre-d -
La Pyramide Inversee * between
damp-sand-crusted legs.
Wet string mounds of weed raisin the first.
Colour something between
dough and lightly baked biscuit, shingly grit
coarsely decorated
with shell particles resembling
those Joseph-Coat-sprinkles we used to ladle greedily
on our buttered bread.
Fairy Bread we optimistically called it
though it tasted like slightly pasty sugar,
nothing magical at all.
It was the desire for infinite colour
and plenty
that spoke to our deprived hearts,
back then.

The foaming fringe could well adorn a latte-d lip. 
The shallow waves are guacamole,
the troughs where guests have gouged with tortilla chip.
Further out the avocado peel
becomes self-evident.
Waves miniaturised by distance
mimic the alligator bumps and grooves
of that vulval fruit's skin.
Then true deep sea,
a vine of passionfruit and virulent blue pea,
recalling Homer's dark wine
but that is not
all. Not at all.
Peer hard into the salt-sprayed horizon, con   cen   trate
and there will appear,
a fine, electric-blue line,
a trick of eye,
that defines
something that simply does not exist, something that eye insists

does too.

*La Pyramide Invers\u00e9e (The Inverted Pyramid) is a skylight in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall in front of the Louvre Museum. It looks like an upside-down and smaller version of the Louvre Pyramid.