forest

Along the washed shore, on a black and white day where glimpses of blue are forsaken for a 'mid grey'. Laughing and falling over each other as we meander over the windswept shingle. We skip amongst the froth of waves, which shouldn't wash over our shoes like shaving foam. Daring each other to get that stone, the black one, that shiny one, that is just out of reach. She told me that it has a name, that helpless running back and forward trying to touch that sand before the next wave, but I forgot it, in my being me. 1

It is cold, and our hands, which stick out of our heavy sleeves holding pieces of stone and driftwood, are ice, and our hoods are up, knotted against the fierce welsh wind by numb fingers. 2

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, today.3

We 'walk on the sky', as she says, and i glance down and see that she is right, that the sand is like glass, reflecting the buffeted grey sky. I feel that I am part of this place, just another part of the wild beach. 4

It feels like we are in the middle of nowhere, together, soul sisters, as she told me. 5

And then we stumble upon the forgotten forest, only stumps now, all that remains of the lush green woods. We remember the story we read that morning of the Celtic king who too drunk to heed the wild sea, too drunk to do anything but watch as his people were drowned, and the forest washed away. We are thrown into the past as we look at each twisted root in it's own small murky pool. We walk for years in the buried forest in the sky.6

But soon it is time to go. We must hurry back along the road, to wait in the station in the ghost town, for a train which I am certain will never come.7