and its birdless machine murmurs
I seek out the sea
from ceaseless cement
into the wind-lashed blue
I wander
footsteps squeak on mottled grains
I gawk at rocks and coiled shells
my body reformed
by the bay’s blurred contours
a coppered sun spins halos
and I then see them, the sanderlings
lingering in the blue wet
sky sand
edging north as they forage
among the orange sheen of stones
I watch as they jostle
for the least exposed positions
as they probe for prey, small crabs
amphipods, crustaceans
polychaete worms
they beak the impossibility
of their persistence
toe the tipping point
with their inky-black legs
when threatened
they will erratically careen
yet sustain their wave-chase
in the face of us
as we erase
half their population
in just fifty years
shhhhhhh
the sea’s susurrus slip over sand
the sanderling’s
ghost-gray bodies
are buoyed
by light—
a dim absence whispers
something is askew
the swelling tide swallows
each track
each trace
of the snow-gray plumage
as they slip from my sight—
yet remember how their beaks
had punctured
the coppered sand? I can taste
a bittering on my tongue
now, a longing, how
can we mistake this excess
for ecstasy?
I count each second between
waves, listen
to the wet dark drone
of water over stones, the water
wounds of absence
a bitter salt lack lingers
shhhhhh
can you hear the tides’ criers?
these sand grains
were ground from
everything, little diatom
shards
and shards of viscous glass
every feather follicle is now hollow
with loss
when the beach empties
I linger, still seeking
the peeps as wind and sea
unfurl a flightless fugue—
do you recall that time
I tried to be viscous?
I thought sand held
something
I could survive on
now the air clings salt sick, water is
unraveling, look—
there they are again
in the ephemeral blue-wet
the sanderlings
beaking
out their briny language
this orange
anguish
