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