After our trip to Lancashire, we detoured on the way home to Crosby. For years we have wanted to see Antony Gormley’s installation, Another Place on the beach at Crosby.
We arrived at high tide … a muddy whipped up sea, grey skied, cold to the bone kind of day … and there, head and shoulders facing the force of the waves stood an iron man … silent against the churn of the water …
… we waited for the tide to turn, watching gulls circle, daily runners and dog walkers brace against the wind, grey against grey as dull clouds slid across the sky …
… and then we walked, promenading above the beach, pulling scarves higher, hoods lower … and stepping down onto the dark damp sand, we were among them …
… the men who stare … solid, sturdy, sure … an army of Canutes …
…defying the tide …
… watching over the distant mountains of North Wales, the docks of Liverpool, the passage of time …
… some, marked by humans, jumped on by dogs, whipped, battered and scorched by nature …
… as the journeys of life pass by, day by day by season by year … the iron men stand, silently still, and present.
Gentle faced …
… and deep in sea, and sand, and the debris of life …
… as the tide rolls out and in and calms and storms in its rhythm … as the gulls and wading birds squawk and scuttle and flitter … as the dogs and children bounce and bark and bound … and the walkers pause and stare alongside and behind … there is a mark that some things stay, a constancy, an anchor, a deeply rooted surety to their presence. Here, and now, and tomorrow.
When new tides and new light will bring change to that which is the same.
