Escaping the thin ice

Skimming stones, between the fizz of static
sweeping salt-like through the atmosphere
faces stung red in the seasoned elements.
We are standing on a powder keg shore
no-one wanted to light the fuse then still
you kept your distance and surveyed
the grey water rolling wet towards our feet.
I threw the smoothest flattest stones
with thoughts of several rebounds.
You said peaceably "You always seem
as if you are waiting to go somewhere."
Impartial I skittered stones across the sea
in a bent upon way, with my hands venting
the burned up oddments of another affair.
We talk of the arrival of the Brent geese
grazing on the mudflats, gathering along
the sands and marram grass, sustained
by foxes scat rabbits sheep. The geese suit
the red laterite look-a-like dunes, beginning
at sunset and starting at sunrise, they are close
the plume of their brave bellies heave, as they
babble on from muddied beaks too far out to reach.