Dock of the Bay

The sea still wears her dangerous face, her width cut arrow straight at the horizon ragged at the other end, lace to scissors. The wind is her hound, crazed with the departure of wind that pushed no rain. Colonies of gulls plot their exodus across the island to the river, or on pinnacles of the old fort, armed and ready for invaders who do not come, only sea birds, seeking asylum from their free lives as if freedom is too much to bear sometimes, or else they draw with their terrible focus a telegraphy of sharp cries, wings dipping into the morning harvest of seaweed and shells, the hooves of wild horses, the bones of old sailers.