On the promontory, in the day,
Alone, I look in idleness.
Gulls, yes.
They circle, yes.
Their cries, a tapestry of the familiar.
But, on this day, they swarm. So many.
And, now, their crude symphony quiets swiftly
into a windblown silence.
Disturbed I am, in my ennui.
A smoky greyness filters all reflection.
The birds, in this cool contrast,
have the aspect and the purpose of carrion seekers.
I see, in this charcoal sea,
lapped over by choppy waves,
what surely are the twin backs
of some marine enormity,
not of this place.
The buzzards, still in silence,
circle ever more tightly,
but will not land.
The marine things do not move.
From the gloom,
I spy the coming storm,
one of immediacy.
The carrion birds disperse, leaving the scene.
For a moment, losing my vision, I cower.
Then I see, in the charcoal sea,
not two beasts, but
the shoulders of a drowned giant
bared by the boiling billows.
As I hold fast to my rock,
the tempest ferocious turns her over,
and the dead face floats,
entangled in the green hair of the sea.
I am overcome.
