In this month’s Manx Bard column, Bradley Chambers talks about his favourite place - Fleshwick Bay.

Saying this is a beautiful island is nothing new, but maybe I will say it anyway. My favourite place? Fleshwick Bay. North of Port Erin. Not as far up as Niarbyl. A secluded place. I kind of like that. Steep hills on both sides and generally calm waters – a good place to swim.

I’m at the end of Surby Road and I walk down to the stone and pebble beach. The view across the Irish Sea. Quite a few birds around – a couple of cormorants, some oystercatchers and herring gulls. Not much else though. I’m alone.

Someone has been here though. I saw footprints on my way down. I wonder who that might have been.

It’s too cold to swim, and anyway, I have this poem to write. Time and tide waits for no-one.

I am not alone anymore. There’s a dog. Bounds over towards me. He’s friendly and so is his owner.

She tells me that she comes down here often. I wonder about her. Married, single, widowed? I’m hardly likely to ask, but love is like that. Kind of malleable, changeable and unknowable. I wonder also about the footprints. I only saw one pair, but who knows?

Surely the theme for this month needs to be Valentine’s Day - but how to write a love poem? How do you avoid writing something that hasn’t been written a thousand times before. How to stay authentic?

‘I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams’ (W. B. Yeats). I can relate to that.

What is better than love? Sometimes it’s all we live for. Endings are tragedies and are sometime unbearable. And unrequited love? Well, that is the only type of love that never needs to end. I think about that sometimes.

I hope that you enjoy Valentine’s Day – whatever that means to you. More than anything, I hope you have someone to love and that you have someone who loves you. We all need that.

This is my poem. I hope you like it.

Fleshwick Bay

Fleshwick Bay, where,

that fresh and gilded breeze

did not bother me, and swept

Marram grass to curves,

we ran on towards the waves

I saw the shadow of your smile,

felt perpetual motion

we swam out

heading past the rocks

which contain the horizon -

that evening you seemed

like summer

empty place, where,

our unsaid words,

were cast

unsaid

away.

We ambled back as one

drank prosecco one last time

forgot that wayward day

an interlude sunk in memory.

I walk on Fleshwick Bay

pace ribbed and rippled strands

I do not know them.

I regret the palpitating rain,

which disturbed us

I just about recall when it was,

you clasped my hand tight,

in your own

asked when

I would ever

love you

I said I would never

leave you.

Turn around on Fleshwick Bay

turn and drift away

the cries sang out

all over Fleshwick Bay.

I should not go back there.