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Willets under an Overcast
This new and winter term is a stopped wheel
To push against, it budges and rolls back
Into its rut in a hard-frozen track
Through the inside country where I think and feel:
Outside the willets land for their evening meal,
Their lifted wings exposing elegant black
And white zigzags, beside the tidal slack:
Gray clouds, gray ocean, and the light still and pale.
Whatever was missing from what I did today
Is the second overcast to run under here,
I puzzle and puzzle under it all the way
To my turn-back place -- willets again, a pair
Alight on a black rock off shore, crying kerlear!
Teetering prettily, above the sloshing gray.