Take a look at the skyline’s edge, the fortress of rock,
the place of a land defined by protrusions on a ragged sky,
of sharp silhouettes where black meets pale grey,
where the winds are the spirits that linger in fissures.

Deep chasms hold tight the echoes, whispered secrets
of a past unrecorded but snagged in the ache of folly,
still rustling in the heather, and even the pain
of a thrown stone is borne by a peat bog that will never let it go.

I am listening, straining
to hear the ocean
between the rhythm
of the hush and the hush.

The shallow reach extends
with each incoming wave,
every new ripple,
a thought reaching out.

I leave a trail of words
in my wake; curled-up
letters unfurl, expanding
with each new lap.

Paragraphs are castles,
their turrets brittle
as shells gather
in questioning marks

– cockles, limpets, whelks
like consonants
decorate my path
as I move to the edge

along with all the other
fragile-legged creatures,
I am swept into the cool surf,
carried into the deep.