Holiday Scrapbook Poem by Mary Champion

Shells;
smooth worn pebbles;
burning hot sand;
melting ice cream.
Striped deckchairs;
buckets, spades
and slowly dissolving sandcastles.

Promenades along the pier;
music and merry-go-rounds.
Amusement arcades;
precious pennies in insatiable slots.
Saucy, sexist postcards
that still make me smile.

Stone harbours;
sailboats;
ragged nets;
sad glimpses of redundant fishing vessels.

Rugged, windswept cliffs;
creaking windmills;
open country;
open minds.
Unwelcome rain;
laughter captured in a fading photograph.

Church spires;
stained-glass windows;
tilting tombstones
with illegible inscriptions.

Heritage!

Steam engines,
magnificently malevolent
as they belch polluting smoke -
and steal our hearts.
Iron staircases;
overgrown train-tracks;
shabby tea rooms.

Ancient castle ruins -
distressed fortresses,
dried up moats
and once embattled battlements,
the haunt of ghostly
knights and ladies.

All these images melting and merging
into the amorphous essence of ‘holiday'.