We are prepared by now
for the blue-grey of the sea.
storm clouds, grunts of wind,
there were even waterspouts last week:
one spiralled inland and wrecked a railway station.
On an empty beach,
you find a dead penguin
his waistcoat peeling away
rolling in the grey sand of the shallows
dissolving already into winter.

Winter comes, ritually, we know,
calmly enough.
Outside suddenly, a branch flies past.
We go rugged-up against the cold.