An aluminium stepladder peeling off-centre –
I’m guessing shot near the magic hour,
at Newtown Cove, along the cliff road early July;
little noise to side-track by.

A trinket linking sky to sea.
Think tides, think Old Moore’s Almanac,
pressing out crème flat from shingle mill,
on the full, soft booming and booming.

And secured not for millennia.
Fashioned bare-plate bullion
conquering true from your mortar mix
tugging the lime-slipped pier affix.

An imagined volley of swimmers stripped
their gasping gasps rock countersink;
others more measured a deglazed date-brown
burst blowing in a film of viscosity.

All knapping the footrest’s grip.
Having heard the voice of the sea,
tongues transmuted, mouths’ ripped bliss,
they stare back in, towel-drying into common calcite.