Ashore

Dawn arrives in a dark widow’s shawl. A hard sea rubs raw the knuckled bones of the shore. The first thing a sailor sees as he dreams of arrival are the white hands. Sometimes the hands are land marooned seagulls, sometimes the hands are the open fists of the sea. When in a stony village by the waves he disembarks from the tossing dark, when he clambers over its sea walls he laughs, but it is not a merry laughter more a harsh cry of a wild and restless of joy. The cobbled streets are shedding their scales. Fish heads are poking through net curtains. Mackerels swim in world-weary eyes. Old men leave their cots shave their whiskers with a clam shell. Seaweeds hang like dreadlocks from dripping eves. Bare cold feet roll over paved stones all is slipping backwards. A sailor must wash his face with beer while bailing green water out of his shipwrecked eyes.