Neptune’s Seat

Life’s barnacles had encrusted my memories,
I could no longer remember my brother’s face,
Sweet sixteen was far from sweet for us,
A summer holiday, sunshine, a slight breeze, gulls sweeping overhead, girls and surfing,
An ideal scenario for us to indulge our passion for riding the arching breakers as they raced towards the land,
It was a game,
Hunting for the biggest, highest and most powerful waves; generated in the ice-blue unseen depths, by the Sea God’s fickle temperament.

The cove was not new to us,
We had surfed there in all weathers.
But that day there was a stillness that we had never experienced before,
A cloudless sky transformed itself into a raging storm within minutes,
Accompanied by volleys of trident-like flashes of lightning,
We headed for shore, but were catapulted from the security of our boards.

I was washed ashore unconscious,
And discarded on the beach like a piece of human flotsam,
They never found my twin’s body,
Now on days when the sun is beaming down on the Sea’s azure surface,
I will remember him and trust that Neptune adopted my mirror image and made him his acolyte,
So that my twin will stand forever, a youthful shadow behind the God’s throne,
In his palace built from the havoc of wrecked lives.