Pelican

The waves on the thin water of the bay
are white speedboats, zooming, zooming in.

The little sandpipers ducking and bobbing
and tweeting their handmaiden dances

under the watchful eye of their skylark
guards, broad-winged and sharp.

Just one pelican, austere, bobbing,
no sign of motion
but the prow of his galleon cutting
out toward open water.

The hazy city is an island
as calm as the blemishless sky.

It’s hard to know whether it’s better
to fall down in the cool, thin water,
or run like a crazy infant in among
the sandpipers, gabbling my own
incomprehensible song.

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