What brightens dawn brilliance but the radiance of Christ?
Shielding their eyes, men stood back as, timbers warping,
fire levered strake from keel. Hold and cabin, blistering black,
collapsed; now love that held them close in fog or tempest,
concealed by smoke, blurs their vision. Voiced indistinctly
through magnetic fog: ‘that one’s your dad,’ she says,
tuning into white noise at a sudden expletive. The starry lid
slips as, tilting to the swell, they turn above the shoal.

The black dog, padding through shallows, scenting the tide,
arrives at dusk, opposite the quay, on the dark of the marsh
and looks in as one who watches shared intimacies
through an uncurtained window. The boat, brightly lit,
gives up its hoard of silvered black and slate blue fishes
and those sorting them, hauling the net, shifting crates,
shout and curse through the crackle and hiss that shields
their world from what darkness, closing in, reveals of his.
...