The tide-watchers

At the end of a sand-heaped lane

A scene from Rembrandt –

Worried lights clustered against hugeness;

Lowlit men appraise an upraised ocean

Boiling where a beach should be.

Quiet speaking on a universal plain

As wind blows the buckthorn flat and

The blackest of black cattle stand against stars

Behind the dunes behind the sea-wall now attacked;

They move and moan like their owners.

“In twenty minutes we’ll know” –

“Twenty minutes”; eyes down and overlapping out,

Await the flow – there is nowhere else to go.