C.J. Allen - To Read the Relationship Between the Surfers and the Residents at Newquay

First, you have to understand the way

the sky over the ocean is unstable,

its grey-greens and its cloud-stopped blues, the leaden

vaulting of a sudden storm. The trouble

caused by all the camper-vans that squat

along the beach-front, like a line of pugs,

is critical, as are the rifted dunes,

the interzone of stones and wrack, the flags

and notices, the blond bucks in their wetsuits.

You have to feel the surge and loss of power

that is incoming surf, the magnet's pull

between things, dog and man, fetcher and thrower.

You need to look through panes of water filmed

with oxygen and light, and hear the hiss

of air in sand. You need to see the beach

at night flecked with the sparks from driftwood bonfires,

and those who stand at blackened windows quietly

reflecting on a life, while farther out

the Atlantic gathers, waiting to explode.

You have to know what you would make of that.