As I walk by the insomniac sea,
under sandbags washed white
by an avalanche tide, the ledge
of beach incrementally slender,
I meet a woman working upshore
the other way. If a tsunami came,
she says, arms arcing wide, I’d let
the sharks devour me, and her laugh
dances us towards the limit
where the city becomes a shanty
rafted and swept away
from our landlocked past, more
and more unreal as if no-one lives
in houses flooded in a tea-time fug,
the sports field goalposts
stuck on nil, those nonsensical cars.
