Two poles in the sea. I watch my brother     pass between them – water taking his
death down to where unpredictable currents     pull surface swells apart. Deeply
tethered into sand the poles tilt as though bent by     the ocean’s solipsistic tides.

Two sentinel legs resisting erosion’s salt chaft     . Clouds like wet holes pierce
the stormy sky, moodiness receding into     orange-whorled sunset, unmoored.
Two poles in the sea stand like old grey birds     , tabernacles to hold the wind.

The ocean swirls around their thin souls. Did he     have two? My brother? One aquatic,
the other human? One unbending, the other     fluid, a kelp forest drifting beneath

love’s surface? They hold time in scarred     contemplation. Practical once, now
abandoned, they might last another century     , their resilience withstanding the sea’s

fickle declensions. From the shore my     camera drinks in the light, the waves, the sky,
the mountains. Shell-grit and weed     rubbish tangled along a dark crescent beach.

She-oaks burn black against the horizon     . A drone might photograph all this less
obliquely. The huge rock wall is roughly     tumbled like a jagged edge I cannot cross.