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(Todd’s Point, Reid State Park, Maine)
I came shivering, knowing how lines of the tide
will use seaweed, and sea-drift, and sea-wrack (and bone)
to etch with. I wait to be marked on the sand
(a thick sagging rockweed, its bulbed grace undone),
moved each way like feathers, dragged slow as a hand,
or just whitened — past breath. I’ll be moved till I’m gone
to where no earth is ready to hold me inside—
(as I follow gull-shadows back over the land).
(I am hiding myself where there’s no room to hide.
Now I whiten my hair in the wind of no dawn!
Now the seagulls are whitening too! Now they mourn
In our turning and turning!