They sweep, a-dance, a trio
Swooping wildly o’er the water,
Darting wingtips washed by wavelets
In the swerving, swirling chase.

They soar, they dive, they rise,
Gliding up above the shoreline
Showing black against a skyline
Soft with opal-gleam pastels.

They hover over color –
Pink and purple, greenish-blue
In a fragment-mix of motion
As the wavelets chase the sheen.

Then again, against the cloud-light –
Coral, blue-green, lilac-gray;
They trace a tie between the two
While weaving lace-paths with their ways.

I traveled through a windswept waste

Wide weary, dreary-hued and beauty-bare,

When in that bitter, lonely place

A form arrested, held my stare.

It rose to just above my height –

A pole with battered board atop

That shivered in the biting wind

But bade me, even still, to stop

And gaze in hunger at its face:

Wood scarred with etchings deep and old

That spoke in silence of that place…

Drove out its harsh and empty cold.

At last I turned back to the waste

But knew now that I tread upon

A path another soul had faced

And passed. I could continue on.

White of clouds in day-blue sky
O’er-traced with criss-crossed, branching lace,
Set wav’ring on the water’s streaming rush
To yet another place –

Sand and rocks all browned with moss
And tiny pebbles littered ‘round,
Sealed in by mirk-fogged liquid that
Slips ever past without a sound –

Oh, which to see?  Could the world within
This wet, thin-layered atmosphere
Negate the glimmer-hinted realm
That far beyond its depths appears?