From early morning coffee
to noon walking the shore
you spoke your sadness
getting a hold on it,
grappling with the thing
‘a green
wriggling darkness’
‘Alone, deep
In a forest at dusk’
the more you spoke of it
the further away it went
We found on the beach
a stump of bleached ash
darkened by high tide
a knot made a cruel eye
the cracked end, a jaw
writhing in a roar
‘the white
skull of a serpent’
‘the head
of a stone snake’
Later, drinking black wine
legs hardening with tiredness
you threw the driftwood
into the flames, embers
flew upwards, wrenching
off a belch of fire, the eye
smouldering as it split
we looked on with nothing
but light
and silence
