Clever Magazine, Vol. V, #7 " Beaches on my mind " (www.clevermag.com)

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Beaches on my mind

by Dee Walmsley

Ah, the beaches I have known. My footprints in the sands of time, lost in nature but beautiful memories in my mind.

Hawaiian beaches, golden brown sugar splashed along the landscape rippled with black streaks of lava rock. Violent beaches, ever-changing scenes as boiling waves crash their shores then leave, sucking up all in its wake like a gigantic straw, tasting the brew and spitting it out, over and over and over.

Foaming waters, constantly batter soft curving sand cliffs, alter the shimmering silica with each pounding. Surfers catch their wave and ride the seas like broncos in a ring. Farther along, weary waters gently caress the shore as tiny birds play hopscotch between each wavelet seeking the treasures of the sea as sustenance.

Native children, equipped with rubber band sling-shots race along the sands, snagging translucent crabs for the waiting soup pot. Surf roars its dominance as it peaks, and then ignored, it loses face, falls to the sand, and dribbles onto the shore.

Windswept, grey, cold water washes the shoreline on Oregon 's coast. Grey sand landscapes the scene dotted with massive rock formations sticking out of their watery graves, reminds me of ancient druid's ceremonial altars. Whitecaps crest, and are swallowed up by the roiling water as they race towards the land. Seagulls battle air currents, hovering, climbing, and diving like miniature white spitfires in an aerial dog fight.

Naked breasts dot the landscape, nippled peaks reaching upwards as bathers stretch their bronze bodies presenting themselves to the golden sun on the beaches of Portugal . Cobalt blue skies are mirrored in the warm sea as it kisses the shore inviting one and all to partake of its pleasures.

Like a moonscape, the grey sand of the Canadian west coast stretches on, speckled with puddles, marred with the cavities of clams, sea worms and children's sand castles, she waits. Her lunar clock keeps ticking. When the pendulum swings, so does her tide and her waters return. Puddles slowly fill their buried treasure and surface to play on the ocean floor. Crabs, clams, mussels and a variety of wigglies greet the sun warmed water, as it washes over them, on its timeless journey.

Up the coast the white sands are constantly shifting with the rolling surf while the air is filled with ocean spray and pine. Eagles scream their piercing song into the wind. It echoes back to the salmon below. Orcas rise from the depths, and then silently sink deep into their watery home, mixing the spray and air from their blow-holes with the salty sea sounds, whoosh, whoosh.

The tide is in, filling the air with the smells of seaweed, sand, and seawater, to some a stench, to a British Columbian, home.