Shelter

Decided on there not being a voice,
she instead lay each veil against mine
silently. Within a breeze.
A breeze born in thoughts of Pacific warmth,
sailing through each sun-dappled stranger
like a wish wished and suddenly gone
until hitting the cold stone reality
of a hand ball alley back in Mullaghmore-
where we sat, huddled and smothered.

Our backs to the ballast of an unused cockleshell
we were soon to be grateful of,
as another ocean wave made large
over the courtside wall in a sluice of hostility
and splashed the port side rust,
echoing the diminuendo of shelter,
in an upturned rainstick's vaulted tunnel
only we knew had ever existed.