Ostia Lido, Rome

Ostia Lido, Rome

Ryan Service

Young love sits no differently to old love on this beach.
It’s only food and kissing and in no particular order.
Other bodies glare into the sun, which seems to roll
onto its side as I sink into a shadowy outline, ghosting
myself. A young guy digs the parasol in deep as children
dance across shifting sand with burning feet. The same sun
sits punishingly on the shoulders of dreamers out on a boat,
relieved temporarily as the sea licks their elbows. Ostia.
Ostium. A narrow way in, a capacious O, swallowing the
Tiber whole. Boats land on screens if not on land, with foil
flashes, shoes, phones, and sometimes faces. And what’s
leisure for some is the source of their hope, even as it splinters.

Ostia: a neighbourhood near to the ancient Roman port
Ostium: in its pluralised form the noun is used to describe a doorway or opening

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Ryan Service
Priest & Poet

Ryan is a full-time priest and sometime poet based in the Midlands (UK). His work has been published in Theology, The Sociological Review and other journals. He received a prize for his entry in the Jack Clemo poetry competition and is a writer for the Italian cultural site Settimana News. Before training to be a priest he read English at the University of Warwick and taught in a secondary school.

Photography by Jacob Morch