il mare has snapped shut its envelope,
purses of beads
and bald oysters.

it tires
over rocks,
over jagged golden hours spent
harmonizing the tips of plaster domes
and their shining archaea
with the plummeting sun.

it is an old brick note string
that shakes our windows to the crystal,
the sand tossed into a torrent
emitting shadows of antiquity
and scraps of sheer silence,
cut ragged by condottieri’s ships,
and studded
with empty petals’ splint.

rough bone churches waddle to the seaside
awash with feathered wagon wheels from
the dutchman and his lina,
whose slicked-down tongue takes the foam from the air
and carries out a saline justice in
her molars.