While sifting through old photographs <br />Of childhood, black and white, <br />I came across a scene that stirred <br />My memory, overnight, <br />Three children by a sandcastle, <br />The finest ever made, <br />My sister, me and Hazel, <br />Made with bucket, and with spade, <br />With towers, crenellations <br />And surrounded by a moat, <br />The sand was dry, the tide was out <br />It stood there proud, remote. <br /> <br />Though sixty years have passed since then, <br />That camera shutter's sight <br />Caught just one random moment in <br />An afternoon's delight, <br />It froze that moment of our lives, <br />That castle on the sand, <br />And though the tide swept in that day <br />That castle, still it stands, <br />While we watched as the sands of time <br />Wrought havoc in our lives, <br />The moat we built could not protect <br />From husbands, or from wives. <br /> <br />The tide swept in and filled the moat, <br />The sides began to melt, <br />The water undermined the walls <br />And suddenly, they fell, <br />The love that we had built them with <br />Was washed right out to sea, <br />And left no sign of love behind, <br />For Hazel, Tess or me, <br />And then we learned the lesson <br />That our lives revolved around, <br />That nothing built will last unless <br />It's built on solid ground. <br /> <br />We spent our lives in dreaming <br />Building castles in the sand, <br />Believing that the tide would never turn <br />To wreck our plans, <br />We thought love was the answer <br />'Til discovering, too late, <br />That love swings on a pendulum, <br />The other end is hate, <br />And just as tides flow in and out <br />And level out the land, <br />The tides of life wreak havoc with <br />Our castles in the sand. <br /> <br />7 February 2009<br /><br />David Lewis Paget<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sandcastles-5/
