Windows ajar, awake to the dark:
a squeal and hiss of braking below.
But I hear the surf’s looped roll
smash mussel shells, pounding
their jagged fragments into sand.
Like spume in the wind, doubt nags my skin,
but does not crystallize.
Instinct, professes Winston, is what matters:
we’re hostage to our genes.
Queasy, I reach for the remote.
Another celebrity channel:
the stink of dead cuttlefish
washed up among plastic bottles,
glass shards and broken chairs.
Night buses jostle a stretch limo.
The mini-bar yawns, and houses tilt
seaward. Here in hotel limbo.
Over a rutted mudstone shelf
flood tide fills extinct footprints,
leaves question marks in pools.
Full English breakfast dawns:
mushrooms grace my plate,
the closed anemones of trodden water.
A cormorant suns its unfurled wings,
cruciform as my upbringing.
v.2003 / ix.2005
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