Jacob Polley: A Tern (strike sonnet chain, 9)

Someone’s always praying for a second chance.
I walk the seaside path again, just once
today along the now, dragging my feet
into the wind for birdsong, hope and light.
The body strikes the ground day after day.
My shoes show me this in their rubbings away.
But I forget when I walk what it is to work:
to walk isn’t work. But it’s work to walk
into the wind. The walking chamfers my shoes:
the wind on the big glass rollers chamfers those
and blows the dusty foam back out to sea.
The light is chamfered, too. A tern shows me
with its wing-tilt flash, that flash a thought
I hadn’t thought to think, so have for nowt.

Jacob Polley’s fifth book, Material Properties, is out now from Picador.