If you don’t like change, don’t live at the beach because
the restless tide twice daily erases all certainty,
gobbles up the shore, disgorges it by inches at the ebb.
All along the ocean’s edge breathe its lunar rhythm,
each minute washed away for yet another.
Butter clams bathe in saltiness, but crows may change their fortune on the turn.
Song sparrows sort beach drift, popweed, tangled grass till rising flow
sets their mobile meal adrift. Footprints—webbed gull, long-toed heron, mine,
a melting map of vanished exploration.
Worn from ceaseless travel, stranded logs lift and float
to roam again should the flood permit.
They’ll find them selves a distant resting place, never to be rooted.
On the sand a blur of dunlins lands to feed and nap, but they won’t be delayed.
The heart will have to settle for this urgent chattering vision
and be satisfied. A snapshot, not a portrait, of migration.
And I, planted in a stalwart house unshakeable, it seems, on bedrock
lie awake and hear the murmur of an ocean saga, our story as enduring
as a gull’s wingtip scribbling its signature on a passing wave.
–
Bonnie Demerjian writes from her island home in the Tongass National Forest, a place that continually nourishes her writing. She has written four books on the history and natural history of the region.
© 2024, Bonnie Demerjian
Halfway Down the Stairs 