The Terrace

I like the way this one terrace stands

Backs defiant against Northern rain and onslaught

A crescent moon

Interlocking, white brick shoulders

Hold one another

Supportive and companionable

Swaying friends at midnight

Grand and decorative in the safety of ornamental grass and palms

Out of reach behind wrought iron spears

While the wild windblown sea below

Calls out against the cliffs

Frustrated with their boundary

She quarrels desperately

Stone by stone they’re falling,

but sometimes, when her gentle moods take her

she smoothes herself,

Languid against the foot

And though the air is frosted and sharp

For a while there is peace between them

Kind, the wide open sea is silky at your door

Loyal in the silence of windless mornings

The storms part passed

The danger in the cliffs present and inevitable