Today sunlight is a damp thing,

skin peeled back from scalloped waves.

 

The Atlantic bares its teeth

as tide cowers beneath mussel-scrimmed sand,

bits of fractured opal showing in the jawline.

 

From beneath the steel blue awning

we can hear the pier’s timbers mewl with each heave

as the structure leans from light.

 

It is dusk. She won’t see another summer.

 

When I shuffle her to the beach house,

even the sky’s tired omens persist:

 

Signal flares flicker into light,

expose vees of seagulls against the sky’s drop-cloth.

They fizzle for a moment,

 

then snuff out like sparks in oil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Andy