Keith Beavon Poet Verse

The Wash

In 1961 it’s for a weekend away

On a grey winter Friday.

Out from London, 

We drive north on

The A10 to the Wash.

 

Beyond Ely it’s flat and bleak.

It’s an impression we seek

Of a region we’ve not seen 

Where at Christmas the Queen

Is at Sandringham near the Wash.

 

But all we see on either side

Are drainage canals and rushes that hide

Miles of flat fens, and more again,

Lashed by wind, swept by rain.

It is not attractive, the Wash.

 

Now the sun’s set

And it’s cold and wet.

So we seek and find an inn

Next’ the Ouse in King’s Lynn.

We’ll overnight near the Wash.

 

Inside the inn we sit and dine

Beside the hearth where the brasses shine.

Then we spend the night

Both warm and tight.

In the morn we leave the Wash.

 

To-night from a shelf I snap

Down the ‘one-inch’ map,

Numbered “124 King’s Lynn”.

It oozes warm memories of an inn

Where 45 years ago we were in love near the Wash.

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