And still there’s burning along the parallels

– radiant glow a distraction as if solar-flares can lash out

to reach down with particular fury, long arms flailing.

That’s when items gather along the groynes

           we built around the equator,

meticulous and helpful for holding extra silage. 
And when the time comes and all of us are seeking,

      we plan to fill cracks and repair navigational tools

                to take us between the kelp mounds and

mica swirls along the shore.

        A deep tide will tell if the sea rescinds all offers.

   Being serenaded by a galaxy in the cosmic ocean

may have scrambled its radar and now

                it’s just following its instincts.
There was a riprap, and I climbed along its spine,

                                          into chrome-coloured water.

            Holding nimbly to its rocky armour,

spray catching and spreading cellular protocols

       as if it was natural.

We were past hooting requests for the world to feel

       through air and into the cloud.
You made a claim with your insurance company.

         Liabilities marked against a post-humous world.

     I waited for things to settle. Bathed in the long silence

             that rolled across the sand’s silvery plains,

                    moisture thin as plastic wrap, shoreline trees

        curled in gnarly stricture, their twisted constraint compliant,

as if rested heads and the idea of relics could fortify phantasma.
There were urchins everywhere, circles of un-metabolised shellfish.

         You decided to take a wide turn and peel off all extra curricula

                 to watch the febrile shaking.

I wasn’t so relaxed, crouched in waters I hoped would cool me

                                 or take me back to a temporal zone where

             we were no longer in need of human promises.