North of Stinson Beach
       

A quartet of pelicans like a measure of music in flight,
every wave crashing keeps the impossible rhythm:

erosion and decay under blue sky. Fog creeps closer
to the coast, reminds me something's always about to happen,

every moment becoming a past we water down
with each retelling, every place another home

we can't return to. Times like now, I don't know why
I bother writing any of it down—there is no line

between sea and sky, no telling when flow turns to ebb.
Everything passes imperceptibly enough to be missed,

unspeakably missed, the way our every breath becomes
the air itself. Every winter the sand's stripped away

by surging storms, brought back bit by bit, the sculpted rocks
unrecognizable month to month. And yet, every year

the snowy plovers return, their song never drowned out
by the surf, this language of give and take, language of grief.

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Copyright © 2014 Brian Simoneau All rights reserved
from River Bound
C & R Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission