light lying low
in a cod-liver sky,
settling through trawlers;
wavelets flicker
steady like second hands
and boats nod in sleep.
boys line the wall
like neoprene bollards,
salt-skinned sentinels
of the sea stand
as water licks the side;
pier bricks of wet green.
potholes, numb feet –
round and pink like salmon –
slap across the bricks,
heads dripping down
over water-grazed cheeks,
earfuls of ocean,
now cast head-first
over bruised hemp rope,
hurling themselves
into greenish spume,
flipping to the very last
wink of the sun.