Bas-Relief Before Rain

Wendy Mooney

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The cormorants are black crucifixes
wings pinned taut on the breeze,
hypnotised by the sky and gazing upward
from a quicksilver tide -
or a paper chain of dancing girls

linked and ordered into stillness
by storm clouds west of the city,
deepening the light on Scotsman's Bay
so the red of the oyster-catcher's bill
is intensified,

becomes a danger-fruit
pointing from the white flash of its plumage

beyond the crusts of salt on washed-up weed
to the algae on the concrete
bristling with tiny follicles,
urging me to bend to it,
feel it warm as crushed velvet

moist against the skin on a sultry evening;
touched by echo-heavy tide and sand flea
in the lull before the stench of cloud,
sudden rain like television interference
pencilling sound waves on the sea.

Wendy Mooney has previously had poems published in Poetry Ireland Review and in Crannog. She lives in Dublin.