Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

1 In the dark we lay, in hammocks, wine tables at hand, each with a full glass; watching Perseid meteors, arrows of red-gold in Milky Way foam. Laugh, loudly, forgetting it is midnight. Ability to be delighted: this too we are grateful for. Arrows or eels, foam or powder - how a thing is seen, always debatable. Glass half full or half empty? Refillable! We shout, forgetting time has crept past midnight. 2 Storm winds galvanise clouds. In the day, sun pierced each break; the escapees had dropped rain, heavy pocketfuls, like stolen scree. Roses, grown tall, lash at porch glass. Windows have their latches tested. Roofs are pried. Too warm, to have everything shut. We would gape, separated from moving air. It is beyond vantage here - but we feel it, keening - the weight of the wild sea.

Rivers run slick with it. Cut fields hewn from it. Bared skin, too, holds a shine of sun. Into this time slot, to her own unhurried schedule, Grandchild 5 makes an appearance. Pink-gold, cute as a vintage tea cup. She slumbers under day’s fine light, wakes in the dark. Grandchild 3 ponders sisterhood. She observes that babies make parents tired. Could they could be responsible for rain that cancels a trip to the park? Still, she deigns to kiss the infant on her forehead, an experiment in early love. ‘Granma,’ she whispers, ‘look - I’ve got jewellery.’ She shows each amulet on her new anklet. How the star shape has a sparkle in the centre of it. Her very own sparkle. Granma agrees it is beautiful. The gleam of it. How it is crafted. 

Low and hot, the weather was affecting us. We thought in deficits, in morbid fractals. Lost, we retraced an old path: we went to the beach, of course. Trod ourselves over the flat stones, the fine sand, dumped our bags down, set the dogs free. Dog will plunge in, we know. Fat Beagle will wade to his ample waist and stare out while we decipher his expression: something at once dignified and put-upon, satisfied and wary. A rare piece of sea glass is discovered, green, the best kind. Into a bag pocket it is hoarded. Our possessions left below the tide line for the tide is far away and still pulling back. The sea must be clambered to, and swimming is hilarious, for one can only slither between the rounded rocks, and laugh, and our laughing is sea spray, is wings in flight, is sunlight on facets of wave. Up to his waist Fat Beagle stands. Dog runs so much she lames a leg. Our hot car smells like seaweed and dog farts. The journey home is gladly broken. Now we sit eating chip...