Sunset here is the distant roar

          of motorbikes, and down Pacific Street,

                         I hear the enormous rage

               that fills the mosquito’s head. Flies still circle

                 the day’s unalterable groove. A gull pierces

                      the distance like a sail needle. Summer’s

               already gone with its squalls and king tides,

                      quarrels between breakers and shore.

                           In the palm fronds, a windy shootout —

                 a cockatoo firing gun-metal screeches

                      into the dusk. At the marina, boats called Insolence,

          Betrothal, Party Girl, Gypsea, Liquidity

                      bob in the swell, their masts tip

                                  like competing violin bows —

                 those principal instruments

                 which must be heard above all others. 
                      On the headland, motels light up

                                   like bright perfume bottles selling sex,

          headlights flare like shoals of jellyfish,

                              then cruise away. On the beach’s far end —

                      pylons in tight barnacle socks, pelicans lumbering

       where a few old men hold fishing rods and all evening

                      listen to the irascible abrading of their reels

                                    along with the crickets in the marram.

                      Youths throw bottles into the surf —

                      they know the fast language of money
                      is spoken only in the casinos

                             and restaurants and by those who own

                      the shopping malls and boats.

                                  They listen to the tide struggling

                 over the sandbar, their eyes coined

                                                       in the beer bottle glass

                      breaking along the rocks with the force

                 of their curses. Now a few gulls, like last season’s

              junked fliers, peel away in the wind, and

                              the moon writes its graffiti in silver glyphs

                                       across the hoarding of the cliff.