Afternoon by the Sea (from Imperfect available at Yew Tree Press)

Through a window, the word points at a high fence.
Beyond the distant melted sands,
bullets across the sky keep in order
our grey memory –
dust in the old man’s bone.

The promised justice moves further away,
into unlit dampness.
Nothing happens in the past, nor tomorrow.

A whisper grows closer, hungry at bedtime,
dissolved by the sound of
stones and cracked glass under my shoe.

The wooden clocks announce the return ashore
of an empty shipwreck.

©Maria Stadnicka MMXVII, published this morning in ‘Stride’ magazine edited by Rupert M. Loydell