Friday, April 13, 2007

Plum Island by Marc Widershien



A poem for Jack Powers by Poet Marc Widershien http://marccreate.com



Plum Island

Here the human is secondary
to the piping plover who lays its eggs
on the beach next to the dunes.

We humans may not cross the wires
strung out down to the shore.
Enough life has been destroyed for sport.

How good to feel a part of the sea beach--
its hunched rocks, and torn seaweed,
instead of its dominant presence.

We see just a scrim of Boston’s skyline,
the city we love but must occasionally flee.
Bird watchers cling to the roofs

of their cars, binoculars in hand.
How lean are the lines of the horizon
meeting the sandbar that protects the shore.

Driftwood pocked and eaten out by the wind and rain,
invite the human eye into the guts of the sacred.
Scrub trees anchor the sand. My steps are casual

but deep in the wavy dunes. I am protected
by the wilderness of red sumac
with their delicate furry stems.

Nothing flies without
the sun’s permission.
We wait for a change of wind.

Plum Island, Massachusetts, April 27, 2001
With Jack Powers

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