I tread where the mangroves end

in a high tide of red fiddler crabs—

machined claws, slow primordial heads

like sidestepping stones

wet-cemented in ooze.
From their tatty jaws, new planets

mass and tumble like pearls,

empires of new sand moons

forged in the ebb

where barbarians raise their hostile claws.
These coral relics, this foraged rot

are home, or half-home—

we falter, we twostep on the annihilating tide

where each fringe colony

flares and dies, flares and dies,
And breadfruits and ragged palms

whip as if they might lift off

to find an older idea of a shore;

metal beach shacks cling, cling

like limpets armoured in tin.
Now the idiot Pacific rolls its tongue—

here the razing of culture is ritual,

each anthill perfect and perfectly erasable,

perched where the black backwater

will smash overhead and bury it all.