Seascape Poem by Michael Cayley

Even at night the sea's innumerable fingers
stitch and unstitch the shore in white.
Needles of spray which in high wind would mass
and twist like daggers in the chalk cliffs
prick with patient torture in the stillness.

The flap of a gull's wings knits
a gentle path to bed. But the waves,
playing the quiet housewife now,
can twine to passion, crush trawlers to matchwood,
and lick sailors to consummation,
until, when calm returns, the bodies
curve in languid autographs
and clouds of oil float like black ghosts
and the coastline is a seam discoloured
by haphazard jetsam tapping the base
of the white cliffs.