– North Coast, April 2022

Nick Mulgrew

Receding now, the floodwater masquerades as ocean.

Every day the intertide rises further, approaching

the horizon in a parallel band: the coast is leaking grey;

even the dullest shades of blue desert the ruined bay.

We are surrounded by our surroundings, the foundations

now walls, the walls something else – rubble-cairns briskly masoned

and idle, memorials of brick immemorial.

Mangled fingers of rebar grasp from a rain-quarried hill

to the taunt of a fresh-sanded sky. A jumbo rakes by,

banking west, then north, to another where, another why.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 3 November 2022