late afternoon is

wet with light

Two fishermen stroll
the brawling surf

A lizard
decorates a sun-boiled stump

Time has settled on the pier’s
dentistry of rotted timber

its bicycles
fishing pots and

Stinking bait

In the idle swell
Sunburnt men
dangle rods

Two mating dragonflies hover

Prehistorical as the
horned monsters
anglers pull in

Reefed up below
Are boats under black canvas
and gulls lashed
to the rocking water

At the curve of the world

Sun is a spitting apocalypse

Stood close to pier’s end
A man scans the horizon
for a morsel of sail

and tosses a hissing butt
in the heartbroken ocean

Listening to the

Slosh and
amen of the sea