MAROONED

I imagine

that this blanched beachstripe is

a whiteburn of snow,

each returning wavepeak a ruffed chorister,

crowned with tasselled transience, bowing

to tip cascades of silverspike into its tapered lap,

lighting it with icepearl;

that this boatbone ladder

is a driftwood tree on crumpled card,

its grainparch aching with the thin stretch

of watered blood;

that the broken shells are

softpad notes on its stave,

echoing the empty blue

of windsong;

that these pebbles are the blank-faced

solitary,

expectation salt-scoured, then

washed away.

I sit amongst the aged boulders,

those hunched, quiet Christmas guests,

nothing more than a dark dot on

damp paper, roughtorn into three,

yet still too much wasted ink

for a message thrown into the sea.