Grandparents, two grandchildren
The latter skipping, the former stiffening
But not as solidly ageless as the cliffs,
Battered, weathered, gouged and mined.
They are the stage on which these two brief generations
Are looking out from, over the sleeping sea
Nuzzling the towering ravaged ramparts.
Their dog sniffs, the girl points
Her brother waves
At the gliding gulls.
The grandparents ponder decaying erections,
Those solid wheel houses
Beneath which, sweat and straining muscle
Picked and tunnelled
Expending it’s ore – lust
In a mere 200-year old orgasm.
Now these decaying ruins are romanticised,
Weathering more slowly than the grandparents,
But not as slowly as the ageless granite
Glinting in the last sun-spill from the sea
While the tender children laugh and skip
Unconscious of eternal bruising.