walking with runway

Runway organised an event today – Walk West – starting at Hastings Pier. It seemed best to join in as the group moved along the promenade on their way to Bexhill. Others were doing equally interesting activities  . . . .

. . .  gazing out across the sea first to the south – and then to the west noticing how the beach has encroached making a scalloped edge along the lower promenade. Then looking east, anticipating the arrival of the group, and noticing  families inhabiting the beach on a sun filled morning post storms (here pre storms). . .

. .  . . here they come,  all 31, dressed in black as requested. We were to be photographed at points along the  route in a linear composition. I don’t know why but that’s fine. We were asked to stand silently + engage ( there is a cross reference with Gormley’s figures here) . After initial chatting, we did manage this and found it therapeutic and absorbing.

Others were doing the normal Saturday morning stuff in Bulverhythe – spring cleaning huts and tidying the beach – while we meandered along the cycle route that nudges the rail track.

Glistening sea and shoreline and rugged interface of the granite boulders. Signs of wrecked gabions from ferocious storm damage make the path difficult for those on wheels.

On the return journey, I find this long view always enticing.  The event – a great idea – contributing to a worthy cause ( the local refuge), group contribution to a creative concept and also good exercise.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing  

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands   e e cumming