Low Tide At Shoreham

I woke to the smell of the bared sea bed
The sweet and sour waft of salt and algae
Baking in the morning sun

At the rock edge the tide splashing the squatting abalone hunters
Prying off the meaty, mushrooming molluscs
Their iridescent half shell later filled with stubbed-out cigarette butts
An ashen cancer at the end of their rainbow

The copse of laddered pines are quiet now after a night of roaring in the wind
Sounding like the kind of rain that comes through your open windows and soaks your books
There’s a kite caught in the branches, sad, tattered and forever out of reach

Later in the year we’ll be down here at dawn hunting gold tops
No one here has heard of blue meanies, at least not the Kiwi kind
And we’ll be laughing on a lawn that’s heard a lot of laughter

A home like this has many memories
They come and go with the seasons, like the ocean on its step
A white capped expanse as deep and storied as a property split between siblings

You just hope they never sell it