Evacuee

She washed up in a shoreside terraced cottage
fostered by a Devon couple, gentle,
loving, in this haven came to know
the heaven of a sandy beach. With pail
and wooden spade, she reconstructed house,
cathedral, school and sweet shop ubder skies
with no more in them than unworried gulls
which skimmed her pet name here of Dimples, limned
in capitals, in sand the perfect stage
of damp, with with edges of spade and then with shells.
She paddled in the playful waves with squeals
of new delight, quite cleansed of dread. In bed,
tucked, lulled, she breathed, in sleeping synchrony,
the soothing music of the rhymic sea.

Dorothy Pope