And here's my old friend Herb, facing the sea,
Musing, quite motionless, holding, curiously,
A folded newspaper level with his waist:
Day-off ering to sea and sundown, he the priest.
I can't not greet him though the spell will break,
He jogs on in with me for old and new times' sake.
Out of the coiling fog along the shore.
Another lurches in, and then two more.
But nobody else here after I begin.
Once I am startled, when the fog-swirls thin,
By a movement I glimpse behind me on the shore.
That's the moon's hard refl ection. Airliner's roar
Joins wave-roar for one huge roar coming in
Straight after me; and then a hooded form
Comes by with darkness where the face should show;
It's a runner, though. Small light, with sea below
Is the cliff -house, fog-faint, the one a storm
Last year brought down in part, to crash and splinter,
What's left now pushing into one more winter.
A stiff wind coming in and a high tide
Roaring inshore and everyone else inside
Or heading there, what am I doing here
Plugging through mushy sand, with a wind tear