North East Fife Beach

by Bruce Dick
(Fife Scotland)

North East Fife Beach

The sand is hard and flat, stucco rippled by the morning tide.
Ahead of me stranded in the emptiness of beach are a collection of smooth humped rocks
Their shapes and curves remind me of a colony of North Atlantic grey seals frozen in time,
a kimono figure of a black cormorant, wings extended and spread, stands on one of the
megalithic seals drying itself in the insipid morning sunshine.

Memories of boyhood days on another beach unfurl the memories in my brain.
Days when decisions need not be made, nor the thoughts of age, disease or
terminal illness that now trample through my mind like a herd of elephants, drunk on
formented fruits. I pick up my stride and run, am I running to or from something? I do not
know? I have always run, I am the running man.