Repetition (feat. James Yorkston)

This is where I begin Our garden is overflowing, but on the road, there is no sign of life All spread relentless away, grey, black, dust sooth But no mind as within a minute our four feet are upon the moss of the curved, basin rocks And there is too much life to take in, here We climb past the petrified tree, sat like a giant's badly thrown pot Discarded, but hanging on lopsided Climbed upon by generations and generations but hardly an obstacle for you at all, now We creep down the slide of the ashen grey glass Careful, careful And as the water rushes to meet our further neighbours The secret beach is exposed And this is where we shall go, twice a day Passing the igneous and the sandstone The rock pools and the idiot yellow forests Slowly drying in the sun but sleekit still You can hold my hand yet run off to the heights, I call out warnings Terrified of the ending of my world in a few moments time Should you slip or focus on a maroon red shell-less snail just a little too closely And here the sand is a renewed virgin here my feet slowly sink The water creeping to my toes reminding me of my own childhood The grit under the nail, a blink and I am there, charcoal in my hand Decorating the rocks with the evil lunged faces The skull and the cross bone and then a Yelp And I'm back to you and your calls for attention I watch the waves the gulls the guillemots and you I watch you I breathe the air and momentarily confused a trickle of water with a fat broken heel I lift and I pop seaweed for a scent achievable nowhere else but my memory And soon my son you will be me And I will be gone And when I die lay my body down, far, far along this furthest strand We cannot control the longlines At best I can skim a stone 17 steps with luck But after that I have no control of the trajectory The weight, the ripple of the water So it is important we throw with grace and precision The collapse of the flight, the illusion And I teach the curl Explain my understanding of the cup of the base of the stone A traditional black weight slate coin, perhaps not the best For me And every few moments we will hurl a brick, and laugh For it always works to hurl a brick, for us I tire, you skip I nudge a discarded crab and with a shard I remember a friend Battered by life's low easy tide In his own life changing harbour wave His own tiny tsunami 3 9 3 9 And what a life to live For that fellow What a time to realise that this surge will be the last That he cannot survive this swell A crash and I panic and I struggle to breathe Perhaps He could not find his neuk, in which to shelter Now, just give me a minute Like warmth, you return, holding a soap shaped stone Curved and perfect and Look, I can use it to draw with When you carve swift, sharp minds 1, 2, 3 And when it still be here to move in With short sir