The Winter Beach at Sanderling

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.