by Les Wicks

The tide isn’t waiting now,
it never has.
Sometimes that house
down by the dock
had hated certainties… children appeared
then left for jobs in a city
which made nothing except money.

For the aged man resident there now
the once a decade paint job looms.
He will outlive the task
though bones whinge & he’s long past ladders.
That last ten years have been hard, sure
complaint but half-heartedly like
plucking out any discordant memory that stinks of history.

Beneath a sunset
flocks & flotillas pass on by,
this world needs roosting.
In a cardigan of silence
all
is enough.

Up on the hill, camera in hand
she is not connected to that man
nor part of the nocturnal exodus.
Taking it in — her still appetites.
The trees that nestle her are not indifferent
as her eye-sparks ride the dusk.