Sea Palling Poem by Roy Ballard

Today the sea is like a silver cat.
She flips her tail along the yellow strand
her rasping tongue has licked until it's flat.
You see the claw marks rippled on the sand
where she has stretched herself towards the dune.
The cat is languid but she cannot rest;
she purrs a sea-cat's song, a gentle tune
but on a winter's night,
when surging tides and storming waves contest
in black and baneful fight to drown the moon
she leaps for fear with madness in her breast;
claws at the dunes until they cannot stand;
the sea-wall slipping, she slinks overland,
foam showing white where she has hissed and spat,
her teeth and tides a-ripping. Tiger cat!