1.
Walk to the end
from stone, concrete, and sand
to reeking wood and shifting sea-
warp and weft of wind and
memory
Run like water from mountains
hours inland to sandstone clefts
Here at the edge
before foaming fathoms
rolling bones towards the shoreline
hear sighs and laments
of the brine
Despite the grimace of the sun
your shadow disappears into the depths
2.
“You can catch fish with marshmallows
as long as they’re biting,”
sages teach my brother and me
between sips of coffee
they wait
their lines quiver in the wind
As a child I learned here
I’m drawn back
to the end of the pier
where I sat with my small pole
weighted
It seems answers can be found
where so many cast and wait
where my brother and I sipped cocoa
and shivered in the harsh wind
waiting for what would come on the other end
the line sunk out of sight
3.
At the beginning
families make photographs
with sunscreen-coated hands
Arm in arm couples laugh
With tones warm as skin
pizza and beer-battered food
hang greasy in the salted air
Surfboards hurry past
sand grit wet footsteps
running to the billowing surf
As a boy I once found this surf writhing with sand crabs
at the base of the tide
a handful of sand crawled away
small brown waves curling and rolling
the muck filled with life
4.
Walk farther
over water
into silence
Silence felt through
the cry of gulls
hush of waves
moan of wood
thud thud and shink shink of joggers
This is not the tourists’ pier
Two teenagers huddle
An old man walks alone
past sinks
bent, mottled with rust
troughs for hot gore to be spilt and returned to the sea
a place to fill buckets with salt water
buckets set next to benches
where people fishing hold their catch
5.
Today, no one is fishing
there is too much sun
Gulls shift their feet back and forth
on the hot, dry boards
The smell of rotted wood
fills the air
drifts back to the beach
A musk of decay
salt and moulder
scales of fish
smeared across broken barnacles
matted with guano and seal hair
Fresh winds blow sea spray
over the rot
6.
I remember:
I watch a bearded man throw a shining fish onto the pier
too small for him
too big for the gulls
They fight
feet, wings, beaks
slapping and stabbing
the boards with thuds and clicks
The fish sparkles, writhes, flops
One swallows it whole
the others peck the bulge in its neck
7.
The breeze picks up
the pier sways
The land is now the thing at the end of the pier
my kinship with land
pulled out over water
8.
Near the end
often there is one like myself
he puts his sandals back on
and nods as he passes
I step around the bench and onto the ledge
waves tug and push
the water pulls even the sky beneath it
9.
I look down to see my
reflection strangled in kelp
cinched around the poles
There are no easy answers here
there is a rhythm
The flow of the tides
the moaning boards
the reek of death
all moving back and forth
from land to sea to land again
and so I too return to land
and back to the end of the pier
finding my place in the rhythm
