Auspices

Shed by the winter hours as they decay,

With slow descent

Light settles through the lower sky in peach,

Then mauve, then pale self-abnegating gray

Against the water, now that day is spent

At Bennetts Beach,

Under the high withdrawing blueness, band

On band, like layers in a decorative

Bottle of sand,

Enclosed beneath the heavens’ dome, as though

This were the perfect realm in which to live,

Preserved, unburdened by the least demand,

Or wish, to know—

And simply be. Along the beach convene

Some silver gulls which stand around reflecting

Upon the sheen

That comes and goes about their scarlet feet,

And crested terns fly back and forth inspecting

The shallows for a last titbit to glean,

And lightly treat

A two-faced wind that works its way across

The metal of the sea it tries to planish

And to emboss,

While deep in its unbalanced buffetings

Gannets alternately appear and vanish,

Plunge, rise, and loft and give their heads a toss.

These things, these things . . .

If the observer alters what’s observed,

Simple to see

The brilliant creatures may not long survive

Our scrutiny. And yet, what would be served

By aeons of extravagance to be

Merely alive,

Without the knowing eye, though its regard

Should bring to light what turns the world to stone?

Does the same hard

Attention that we boast of here abound,

Or has it been and gone among the starred

Immenseness—meaning we must fare alone,

Lost where we’re found?

Beyond Yacaaba Head towards the east

The colors harbored in that sediment

Have been released

And all the lower sky is banked with ash,

Dulled to gunmetal gray. In the event

The gannets, calling it a day, have ceased

Their white panache.

Only the sandhills, looking west, declare

A citrine wash that soon will vaporize

Into the air,

Like some faint exhalation breathed upon

The night, in which a flock of ibis rise,

As though they had a mind to follow where

The light has gone.