Ladies of the shingle

Why the swash welcomed us
with rough, towering arms
armoured with scales of rock and thorn
We came past peach cliffs

through Torquay
to the massed stones of a silver bay
Our ladies talked of campfires there
in humid summer nights
We scraped for the attention of their unholy arts
when they led us past the shingle

I loved the Wiccan
with her swaths and ringlets of dyed black hair
her matching coat and the inviting darkness
of her lipstick, acre wide
I brushed the spirit tree with my hand for her
whatever I believed back then

You loved the Satanist
with her jewellery of uncertain ends
who fell foul of her harsh mother
whom we never met
We longed to love the contrasting pale
of their softer parts

The Witch didn't trust me
I thought I caught her eyeing me with great contempt
when I played the wild fool among the graves
The other - a Vampiress?
The look of the boy in her arms
made me think that

How we thought to be
the religions and professions of our ladies
To be as illicit, charming and unsavoury
Sweet and demonic
for their black boots, but friend our demons
are the bitter kind

Their spells are not
the stuff of amulets or trees
and though the Wiccan once loved me
the Satanist you
our letters won us nothing and distance
smudged the flame