sea view 2021

by uzwi

West Bay is heaving today. Plenty of tragic masculinity on show, from the man I thought I heard calling his daughter out for her posture (until I realised he was actually telling his wife how his employers viewed current affairs), to the one in the black singlet, sleeve tats & camouflage cargo shorts who was clearly in love with his dog. Lots of dog language being spoken—not by the dogs, but as elements of a nonverbal language spoken by their owners, the basic statement of which is always, “My dog is more strikingly crossbred than yours.” Then a woman in a skinny top—worn with athletic shorts, orange knee-length compression socks and retro brown leather hiking boots—answers her phone to say, “Yes, I do. But the lasagne’s not quite as good quality. Oh, ok… I know, I know, but they didn’t get it wrong like that, did they?” Then, “Yes, well he is.” A hundred gulls, wheeling up from the sand below the promenade, will remind each other in later years, “We picked that little town clean &, at the end of the long afternoon, turned west along the coast to the next.”

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