i.

As I scroll down remembering profiles

I start to notice how the strange

half-intimate, half-public comments drift

from everyday, to weekly, to occasional.

I give thanks for the old-style working through

of half-cleared storage space, growing static

in my intercostal muscle tissue – the ache

of finding stacks of cling-filmed magazines,

an A5 photo album’s broken lever-arch,

a silver Discman, rust-edged batteries,

the plaintive flicker of our tongues as they

burn low around a soft-lit dinner table.

ii.

Arrive there as the sun is going down

like a drawn-out atomic flash – the light

trapped in the beach’s uneven water-softened

clefts – then picture stepping back

through the blast radius of sunlight

to open up your private property

which is your father dragging fallen branches

to a bonfire turning like a spool of water,

the soil-damp scent of overalls

and his paint-flecked outline in a pool of mist.

iii.

And then another time track your descent

by the molten line of headlamps in the dark,

the gelatinous umbrella trail of surf,

the sideways motion of a shipping lane. 

Give up the muddy sheet of water under

turbines for the free-standing shadow of

a tower block, the pink horizon vibrating

over liquid glass. And now step forward

onto the beachhead’s wreckage of polluted ice

to catch the rising tension of hydraulic power,

– white spray bursting like a strafe of gunfire

the brutal impact of two waves meeting,

the figures disappearing as they stand their ground.