Deadly flotilla of purposive sails, twisting, spruiking the wind, caught more than a squall, caught a gale, leaving them stranded. Vicious strings of stings, ultramarine webs – spread in the sand, anesthetising nothing. Bloated and swollen, dark pirates deceived in the sea’s silver mirror. Breakers smack sand, whale’s fluke hurls foam – sea’s breathing a false wind

Twisting, manoeuvring, bruises on sand, lethal stings laid flat, nothing to drag, no silver fry entwined. Cnidarians, animated water, trawled Ediacaran seas, garden of sea pens, nodding quills – if there were tentacles, what was the catch? No mouths then, no anus in sight, no teeth, claws or eyes, pulsations only, animated water, clear blue moons, waxing or waning, predictable as water lilies

Stranded in motion, I’m stripped back to bone, my skin is a parchment, hieroglyphic of lines, staring ahead for a change in the weather, at the blueing horizon, around and around, hugging the shoreline, clinging to visage, purple rocks and spume, on this balsa wood raft, both stable and dangerous

Raft turns, follows the current, around to the point, past torn cliffs and back again. Siren sang as she drew me under, and then there’s the other, lashed me firm to this mast. Tell me what’s wrong? If I did it would hurt you. This relationship’s dead, she says, in a hurry, walks gaily through water, waving a hand, disappears into fog

Sea rears up, racing white horses break legs, storm hurling bodies out of the water, great rolling logs, entire trees, a forest it seems, wrenched off at the roots, arms lopped, water lapping, sea smoothed breasts, stripped and skeletal, stranded on sand, sand blasted silver, smoothed dead hands, petrified grin of a petrel, a sand smashed crashed bomber – shattered blue beach-glass, and the bluebottles twisting, inflating – what is this catch that is dry as the sand

Return to the point, the point where I’m turning, here on my raft, which her hands are now clutching, she slides in the seaweed, fingers like starfish, hair streaming sea, eyes of a seal, yet her toehold’s the other, the basking deceiver, booming through fog, won’t drive a wedge, as she picks up the hammer and drives it in – split – ¬my mouths full of sand, and the bluebottles turning, twisting in sand

Rubble of shells all weed and wet feathers, the pirates are stranded, deceived by the sea, what was the catch in those looming pulsations, the strings of stings, a net cast wide, what writhed and was still? Hearts an anemone, crimson and pulsing, shrinking when prodded, dark, dark crimson stuck to a rock, tied to a mast, turning and turning, past the point and back

Here is the earth, here is the sand, each shell discarded, salt stained, sweat stained. Old woman collects shells and says, I will throw them all back, at my age, what’s left? Seen them before, those razors and cowries, cream swirls or chocolate, echinoderm spines – whose eyes will remember, will the wind remember as it gnaws on a shell? All is wound up, poised and watchful

Mind moving matter and the whole world ages, ages beside me, the beach wild no longer but spattered with plastic, the jetsam on ropes, dragging me down, into the current, around and around

Neon flashes and the beach is still writhing, twisting with ribbons of liquid sky. Twin clouds close their lips on a sky of cumquat, sea-winds herd a third cloud, the cumulus, the other, out past the point; it’s gliding, crumpling the ultramarine. Flash – lightning strike – bluebottle cloud, whips of its tentacles, dragging horizon, gone

Pale clouds gone further fractal, reforming, reshaping

Grounds in her coffee cup, her book by the bed

Her shape is a shadow, impressed in white sheets – I smooth it away