Places to Hide

Places to Hide

Pelicans in the sand-gray dawn
A blue heron in misty wetlands
Egrets in Japanese scrolls
Vanishing

There are many places to hide
In this random complexity of driftwood
In these pale dunes shape-shifting
Beyond the foamy reach of the tide.
And there are flowers here and dead things
Which can never meet.

One hour of human time
Must seem like days to a bird
In this salt wind that abuses
All arrangements
All chronologies.

Ragged gulls assemble
Defiantly at the creek
And once again                            
The black sea devours the sun.