an evening alone on a beach, a fish out of water . . .

Where the sea moves the word moves . . .

      James Wright, “The Morality of Poetry”

Accustomed to the intimacy of streams,

The easy circumnavigations of spring-ponds,

Landmarks that stay and trails that don't

Drift away, here the confluence of water,

Sand and sky come together into a singular

Presence, coalescence of depth and distance,

Constant blur of borders and boundaries.

This vast expanse of sea foamed and flung

By an evening wind is to be lost in even

Walking where the shifting path of the shore

Gives the last light a momentary place

And then, giving way to the dark water,

Taking it back like a cloud passing over

The rising moon.  Nothing here settles

Into its one place, the water heaving

And tearing apart, not the calm flowing

Of a creek following its one direction but

The wrench and lurch of a broken thing

Forever repeating one motion and moment,

Like a hurt hawk dragging its wing, though                                          

There is nothing here familiar.  Instead of

Sparrows settling into the pines at dusk

Here one heron at the end of the landing

Lifts and disappears low over the water,

The horizon both sea and sky and then

Neither, nothing but endless emptiness;

Wind silent without leaves to shape it;

The first stars appearing, arranged each

By each without hills and tree lines to

Gather and hold them.  Woods make

A music one hears and answers, here

The air is a stillness empty of songs, no

Sound but the drear monody of sea surge. 

In presence is the absence of place, of

Anything to touch me and take me in,

Field-edge or fence-line to mark my life;

Only this darkness where nothing sleeps.

There is no word here for such loneliness.