The breakers cut against the drowsing shoals,
and the lobster boats rattle like bones in their
moorings. Brackish whips of sand lash the granite
margin, beating the surf to foam and spray
that choke the harbor’s channeled throat.

This giant ocean house squats on its haunches
overlooking the cove; inside, the windows,
tall and drawn as steeples, and the dead-angled
joints and lines of beadboard and chair rail softened,
submerged in shadows of cornflower blue.

And always in shadows now, before the spring
arrives, turned like a key in our small cove
washed by the buoy’s bell, and your hair that
used to glow like honey now a darkened net —
the silhouette of beachgrass slowly catching at the wind.