King Driftwood meets the Vagabond Surf

There he is now. In his salty boots, a fisherman’s cagoule. Yes here he comes now. Muttering that song, always that song. But don’t look at him. No, don’t look. You have to glance away. Because he’ll catch your eye. And if he catches your eye he’ll meet your mind.

All right, he’s gone. But he’ll be back, drifting down the esplanade. Yes, he’ll be back, you can count on that, a beachcomber like him never goes far. But he’s older looking now, his face an oyster shell, though mother of pearl his laughter.

Because he keeps an inventory of it all, and what he finds he never forgets. I’ve watched him writing, copying it into his book of tides. Such laborious letters. Semi-literate at best, I’d say. Bad parenting, bound to be. Rock pool genes. Or genius. So what he keeps and why he keeps it are difficult to understand. Every wave a wafer, every watery waif. Too much rhyme and not enough reason, but when was he ever reasonable?

Anyway, it’s all packed into that supermarket trolley of his. Full of the sea’s distemper. So here’s some of it. A list, I suppose, like a Tesco receipt but without cashback. Doesn’t make sense but he’s too old for making sense.

Tampons, tempests, a turbot’s tumours. A dogfish gutted by gulls on Gwter y Cwn. High tide jellyfish from the night club steps. Sea lace, whipweed, bladderwrack fat as figs. Chitons like quillets in the karst. The terrible tributyls. Then pantyliners, gas cylinders, Japanese aerosols. Polystyrene, a submarine, a brigantine. Cadmium, copper, amber solaire factor forty. Violet anemone breathing. Breathing.  A Venetian astrolabe, a Fulton Street fish market icebox, a lifebelt from Miami Beach in Port Talbot.

He sees it all, taking what he needs, this pisspoor Poseidon who picks through the foam and lords it over the laminarian world. Shelley’s septum like a crabshell hangs about his neck, the cabin notebooks of Hart Crane, Alphonsina Storni’s left slipper. And an isthmus too. And an island. With shoals, with shallows, with shad. A poppy from Sker scree, yes a yellow horned poppy from the skerry. Seventeen abortions out of the storm sewer. And lug. And laver. And more lug and more laver and lavender, more sea lavender mauve as lovehearts.

Then there’s cuttle, there’s cockles, there’s scurvygrass. Sometimes a dolphin, skewbald, stinking. Sometimes a sunfish. Once a basking shark polished like a piano.

And sand of course. There’s always sand. And with sand comes sand’s syndrome. It’s called Attention Deficiency Syndrome. So sand isn’t sent. Sand sends itself, a fanfare in the funfair, its veil on the wave, its vowel in the wind.

And the solitudes, the disappearing solitudes. He has those too, if you require them. And silence. The debacle of silence. The atrocity of silence some would call it who might have overheard his incantations. Then lingered to count the hairs in his nostrils.

He’s mad, I’d say. He has to be mad to live like this. Do you know what they call him? The Vagabond Surf. Yes that’s what they call him. But look away now. He’s coming back.