Michael Aiken

By the sea (retired)

Thick tubes of bamboo conceal your form as you sneak through half light
rain only a sound outside the canopy of tiny dense leaves the understory
cleared for games like these: stalking prowling the enemy-friend grey and
green hiding behind you ready to strike loquats from their bough on the
battlefield’s edge in a terraced gardenscape behind a furnished house
locked closeted and uninhabited. Butcherbirds circle a broken nest blue
eggs melt on the cement streams of termites fly before the storm turning
the sea an awful blue like an eye boiling baitfish in the millions spray
the surface as they breach fleeing tuna fleeing dolphins or something
bigger the whole scene circling in on the breakers and the sand