Yonder

Yonder there, where twig figures bend and blink out as a sea-swell slugs the beach, there the netted thrash, then hauled, toggled and pinched yet more, into a gill-snagging catch. Far away a village rests, submerged beneath a mossy night, yet some prowl out seeking ways to scrub a bare-knuckled living, some to find a new prayer in the restless surf. There a woman in denim is digging for clams, I trudge upon a leaky flow to edge near, to see her blue buckets mouth, its salty slosh, to tell her I laud her rooting stick, the prod and scoop of her delving hands. Here by the spume, a spotty dog runs and scuffs tidal pools, it scampers between weedy humps, a tangle of sea-scupper; nose snuffling a tangy furrow in the sandy smaze. Now the dawn sky breaks apart above and below, let’s slip a far-off world as yet unmade. Near or far seem only a fingerprint of wind and light, a painted wave for distant viewing – always a yonder truth on the margins of nil and naught.