And turkey neck and fl apping khaki pants
And nylon shell from the discount drug store
Slipping along down here and wondering
If some other poet ... deepening in advance
His shame at doing so fashionable a thing.
Wide as the sea itself for my late run
And the sea light-streaked and smoothed out to a sun
Red in horizon fog, and already high
A piece of the moon's rim, in the neuter sky.
Quiet. Sun fl attens to an oval on
The fogbank; to a glowing bar; then gone.
And in the pallor, one pelican fl aps by,
Black on the afterglow; and another, black
Out on the pale sea, silently splashing down
Makes yet another pelican silhouette
With the thrown water; I seeing this all alone,
It happens, with the one sound as I head back
The slip-slap of my feet along the wet.
Old man in street clothes down for a beach walk,
Three women heading back absorbed in talk,
A guy surf-fi shing, the odd runner or two.
And no more pelicans: gulls now skreak and mew,
I scare a willet that fl ies to a safe rock
Kerlear-ing his hurt feelings, a godwit fl ock