Start Bay at Dusk

The fog lifted to a day of light cloud.
By dusk a crowd had gathered
at Slapton Sands,
with cameras and binoculars.
So mild a March day,
one small child of four or five
was skinny-dipping in the sea,
but all eyes looked beyond the shore …

And then I saw it: a flash of black,
halfway between the beach and sky,
and then, again, for sure – there it was,
what everyone was hoping for:
a glimpse of the humpbacked whale.

Several times it reappeared,
once it spouted, then sank
to pop up further down the line.
Soon, it was simply
a distant speck. Then ...

as I turned my back on the sea,
a man with a camera called to me,
“Behind you! Have you seen?
A pair of seals!”
I turned, delighted, and ran beside them,
tracking them as they swam
people-watching from the shallow
edge of the rising tide.

They swam too fast for me, but now
the sun had gone. I set off home.
My photos show so little, I know.
But what my eye saw fills my heart.

© Celia Warren 2017