Relic

A broken concrete piling leaning like a whitened spar in the surf, pitted and worn, throttled in snarls of kelp, tilted further and further with each suck of undertow.

From the tide mark, from flat on the sand as a resting gull would see it, the piling points like a blunt, monumental finger to that place in the western sky where the first red star appears. From the window of the aging red-board house on the walk it is as thick as a pencil stub. From the churning wash of sand and water at its base, judging by the cautious touch of small creatures, the piling looms as a strange old continent on a strange axis.