Day’s Last Wave
Each afternoon he would make the drive
15 miles west from his house to see
the breaking of the last wave of the day.
Armed with an accurate prediction
of the time of the setting, and with
one eye on the sun (or if obscured
by a cloud, on the second-display
of his digital waterproof watch)
the other on the lick of the surf
as it ran along the parched lip
of this small secluded gravel beach.
As the end of the sun teased the edge
of the horizon he would prepare
to record the details of the final wave
unfolding in daylight. Noting down
in his third, thick notebook the sound
of it sprawling against the stones, the height,
approximately, before it fell
and the colours of its collapsing body.
When he arrived home he could still hear
the push and sigh of the sea working
at the shore in the thickening dark.
*Ben Parker studied creative writing at UEA and has published work in a number of places, including Iota, Staple, nthposition and Envoi.