shoals

Hope is always crashing against the shoals of disappointment.

Calm captains of the ship of state struggle to navigate the world system’s waves and shoals.

Suddenly, the towers’ tall shapes suggest familiar structures — buoys bobbing at sea, warning of hazardous shoals ahead; deep-sea oil rigging, pulling up the fluid that drives the industrial ruin of global warming; the watchtowers surveilling a prison or military installation.

Confrontations between Chinese and Philippine government ships over two disputed shoals have flared alarmingly since last year, causing collisions.

You wanted to be remembered as having held this institution together and steered it through the rocky shoals.