The Sea

At night in the flat upstairs
the bed drums like a ship in a storm:

she groans at the weight of the water
streaming off her narrow flanks,

she leaps at each wave. Unreefed
she will turn inside out in this gale.

Sheets fly from the hand –
Oh, she is held in the palm of a wave –

then a shout as clean as a shell,
a shout as they’re flung on a leeward shore.

We lie coiled on the ocean floor,
just touched by the distant wash.

Fish nudge back into caves.
The anemones stir.