Beach Brochure

There is a myth,
a marketing ploy
by men with real estate to sell
and rooms to rent,
men with restaurants and shops and a vested interest,
a myth that all beaches are beautiful,
wide expanses of silver sand and sun,
endless horizons of blue and languid waves
that lull you into peace.
Such places look good on the brochures and TikTok.

And they do exist.
Now and then.

But they are not the beaches where I live,
which are just as likely to be littered with corpses
of things destroyed by sea storms and angry tides,
where waves crash, more threat than peacebringer,
where clouds gather for the next assault
and you are as much target as tourist.

One is, to me at least, as beautiful as the other.
It is not the weather, but the vastness that sings to your soul,
whether or not
it makes the brochure.

About this poem.

About beaches. About life.

Tom