The Winter Beach at Sanderling

T
The “wolves in the waves” driving or being driven
inside the rain, which is one sort of day to be alone
in, then again the beach mile either way disappearing
into the thinness of the air, dead detail of the gone world
from the night before—probably an eaten-out barrel
or two, traps and lines of netting, lumber and almost
carcasses and scored horseshoe shells—brought home
from who knows where, then someone with a dog
making a single shadow out of an idea of sun: each
day rising and thinking I died for some kind of beauty,
standing in the morning on the height of my deck,
trying to wake up, nothing but my eyes to go by—
how dark down does the water go before the tide—
I the god of starfish fallen, the flounder’s whiter bones.
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