Another Way of Saying

That was strange,
that walk to the tower,
almost like a pilgrimage
to some holy shrine,
or hermitage on a rock,
that slow process up the cliffside.

You’d scratched our new car
on the journey to the coast
and I could think of little else
but the insurance claim,
the expense,
the sheer bloody
aggravation of it all,
while your calmness left me
tossing in a fever;
sea fever.

And then we chanced upon the tower,
began the trek to a place
we could not enter,
yet somehow did.

I traced my hand
along the wind-smoothed stone,
blasted orange in the waning sun,
peered through the rusty grill
to a sign that said: Danger – Keep Out,
felt myself buffeted
and for an instant, lifted.

When we returned
the scratch was still there
as deep as ever,
perhaps deeper,
but something else had changed,
though I can’t say what.

Only the silence on the journey home
was different.

[originally posted 10 June 2013]