Tide Pickers

Question marks at the tide line, dark figures bend 
to rocks, to kelp, to sighing 
pools. They hunt this evening 
what they hunted at dawn: what can be kenned 

from the ocean's drawl, its lungs 
and tongue exposed. The more brutal 
question: will it feed us? brings 
their curled spines an immemorial 

conviction. They worry rocks, grapple the sea's 
hiss. The sea in its gasping never 
answers. Yet centuries 
keep lisping the question, and in it whisper another 

less pronounceable: how will we 
die? Phrased and rephrased ad infinitum 
and still the sea shrugs off all idiom 
and hauls the pickers out as tirelessly
 
as tides. Figures stalk against the last anemone 
glow as Venus rises. Small boats rock 
to sleep, Glénan winks from its drowse across the bay, 
two figures limned in early moonlight lock: 

like the tide pickers against the hollow ocean, 
framed in the window, a man and woman bend 
down into each other, carving that question 
the sea won't answer though human hand grasp hand.