Maritime light is a fistful of dimes, clattering on wooden tables, bouncing silently off terrace umbrellas. The restaurant's panelled walls are full of photos steeped in sepia and overblown, boat-sails stark white, ocean strictly brown, horizon slightly diagonal as if the boats are weighing it down. No sky to speak of.

The umbrellas will fold when the light fades, as scheduled as flowers. Tourists sit in groups of two, four, six. They study laminated menus, squint, shield their eyes from the sunshine glinting off the harbour. A sign pleads Please Do Not Feed The Birds, but when departing diners leave behind unfinished baskets of fish and chips, the grackles and pigeons help themselves.

Standing on the waterfront, no one could convince me that water is colourless. The solid blue of salt water. Waves like veins just beneath the surface. I slip through a gate and walk on the lower part of the pier, the part that floats. Find my sea legs when a boat's wake washes by.

Seagulls' knees knotted like driftwood, like muscular ropes. Seabirds towing their shadows across water, across wood made gray and green by the sea. Birds reeling shadows in when they land, the strings invisible. Fishing line.