Skyline

There is only beach and sea.

Sand for miles curves before beach houses
Elevated above hurricane and flooding tides.

Breakers come ashore like waves on any coast
Here, where the foam settles, the water is murky,
Warm, invisible to the touch.
A long strand fronts the Gulf waters
A hemisphere along Bolivar
From Crystal Beach to God-knows where
The wide blue shading to a skyline,
A single line of imagined meeting.

In the sinking light, the sun
Throws its rays eastward
Saturates the house frames
Burns them orange.

The straight line under sky is broken.
The clouds' red tips stand against it
And the heavy ships wait for ever
Or one by one slip forward
Riding into Galveston.

© BH 2014

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Last summer or thereabouts, I kept hearing interviewers on BBC's Radio 4 talking to musicians and composers about creating pieces in response to horizons or skylines. I thought that was worth a poetic effort, just arranging words in around horizons of my own. Here's one for across the pond.