Perhaps

Only the one view, and that of the beach bar
where she is frowning from a chipped green table
over a Chinchon or a Marie-Brizard
of a different colour. It's impossible
to make a ready choice at this early hour.

Watersports, perhaps, if the sea-mist allows,
and someone can be found who will unchain
the crestfallen sailboards and the pedalos;
 if the gulls may be persuaded to unfasten
themselves from the fraying hem of the shallows.

And if the foreshore rather less resembled
the undecided underside of something
dank that continual rejection had humbled.
Or if I just chanced to be ambling along
and touched her shoulder so that she might tremble,

saying (perhaps) 'I have found us a light skiff
to take us to the island.' If there only
were an island, we might soon be talking of
how distant it continued; and, then again,
how slow to heal her trivial, fingered bow-wave.