White foam plumes
Over rocks where the parrot beak
Octopus beak
Smacks and sucks on each spouting burst
Where spiny pufferfish dart
And change their shape in alarm
A jewelled chicken’s foot clenches
Clasping nothing
In its final descent
Beneath the broad-banded waves
In a static rippling line
Unmoving before the whirling gale
Seaweed blanches and wilts
Purple wrack turns ghostly
Shrinking away from the dwindling rocks
As the night sea, turning tide,
Rolls away into the dark
And all the earth sinks back below.
