It is bitterly cold, and I am stretched like a flotsam 
Vitruvian man, adrift on Tralee Bay. 
 
There are wicks of darkness spoiling the green surface 
of the water, 
 
black lips of candle grease fold into the slow 
suck of the tide and the sea washes 
light from murmuring cuts that rinse my body, my eyes. 
 
And then a sound is uncurtained, 
a cry from the shore, 
 
gulls dip in and out of view, on the land, 
and we are stranded, estranged. 
 
The breeze dithers then plumes, 
scrolling over the brim of lapsed fencing 
that keeps us from the failing dunes. 
 
As if briefed of our arrival, the sun skirts the lips 
of clouds, 
lights our way along the grassy hillocks 
that map out the edge-lands of the beach. 
 
We stand like wind-hassled pagan deities 
assuring each other of the way forward –  
certain that the path ahead has not been eroded, 
has not given way to time or tide. 
 
The beach has emptied when we return –  
a beige apron studded with jewelled eyes, 
water-worn pebbles catching low angular sunlight, 
the dawn of evening. 
 
We leave this world behind us, 
our steps are swept 
by the call and return 
of the final tide of the day.