Poetry and Birds on the Promenade, Morecambe, England

Lovely Morecambe-by-the-sea, England.  

Across the bay, which is in fact the Irish Sea, are the snow covered hills of the Lake District.

Underfoot, on the promenade, are bird footprints,

 flying birds, 

a labyrinth with a big gull or tern's egg in the middle.

 And a game of hopscotch based on the magpie rhyme. Complete with instructions.  

Along the railings, surely the original ones, are silent cast iron  cormorants mingling with screaming, live gulls.

"Where do sea birds go to see pictures?" 

While drying their concrete wings the cormorants seem to appreciate the joke.  

Or maybe not!

 The end of the promeade branches off like three pointing fingers on a hand.  They slope down to the sea so that walkers can get up close and personal with lurching waves sputtering curls of gray and white foam.

And then quite suddenly, it seems the tide is out and grassy patches of bright green cushion up in yards and yards of wet pebbles and a great sweep of shining mud flats.  

They make sense now, the dire warnings and signs of deep water, quick sand and fast changing tides.

  Clouds are stuffed into a wedge on one side of the bay.  They obscure the sunset although some rays beam over and as the day wanes smudges of peach accentuate the curves.

A lone gull flies by. Probably gray in sulight but now a silhouette against the darkening pewter of sea and clouds.  Then twenty or so, also black, far away and low glide over the flat, wet sand accentuating silvery reflections from the sky.  

If this was a painting my mother would have said, "That's not real.  It would never look like that."  But it does.

Because daylight is fading orange globe lights come on around the outside of the curving, sombre, minimalistic, "Art-Deco classic," Midland Hotel.  Built in 1933 it went through a bad patch.  Now refurbished it is apparently doing well in a slightly creepy, Cuban Maffia-ish way.  It has decadance and a history it is keeping to itself. 

I have afternoon tea.  Darjeeling in a small, white tea pot and layered on a silver cake stand are assorted sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, a generous slice of Victoria Jam Sandwich (a cake), and a triangular, custard tart.   

 It's a curved dining room with floor to ceiling windows facing out at the famous bay that was once a place of great joy for the hoards of mill workers and their families who piled off the trains at the nearby station and breathed for one glorious week, this bracing, salty, air into their lint damaged lungs.  

   

Copyright Jennifer Gold 2016