Fascinating as a series of (almost scientific) observations, Lawrence.
There's an observer, obviously, implied here, in a way that's not always so clear in many of the others.
So I see the reason for one observation after another, but, perhaps just given my sense of writing speed?) I'm not sure if some editing down isnt possible, 'is being' & maybe some of he 'to be' phrases, letting them be implied instead of stated?
Re-read, it certainly moves our senses through a series of comprehensions of all that is happening, fast & slow, there....
Doug
On 2011-10-13, at 3:38 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
> It is low tide, perhaps approaching turn.
> A light wind from the south-west Beaufort 2
> at the most.
> In the anchorage, water seems calm,
> almost, though one knows examination
> would discover movement. Three birds squabble
> about something one has found in wet sand.
> Turnstones, perhaps. Possibly plovers.
> The world
> from here on is being stripped to bare stones,
> soaked twice and much of the day; the bleached white;
> and the brown or golden, like corms out of soil.
> These types intermix; the first two tangled in weed.
> Orange lichen thrives intermittently.
>
> Ghosts of former land show themselves off well.
> Burnt Island. The predatory solitary rocks
> part submerged would once have been low hills
> when sea was lower.
> Bits stand ungainly
> where they shall soon be pushed to fall, breaking
> possibly, soaked and dried, heated and cooled,
> becoming sand in centuries. And it is so
> It makes us.
> A sparrow sand-bathes
> energetically in bare looseness
> left by a path worn through a falling hedge.
> Herring gulls eat close to the rough shore line
> and then back away shaking their heads in sets
> of shaking, over and over.
> A black-backed gull
> preens itself in blue water.
> And small birds
> wait upon walls in sight of yellowed grass
> where, until recently, there was a tent.
> The rain in the last hour may bring up much
> that can be eaten.
> A song thrush jazzes
> the afternoon from a low roof. Behind,
> in the field hedges and a small woods,
> great complexity of song. Ahead,
> growing sounds as wind and tidal flow
> begin to rise.
> The sun is at its height
> and must soon fall, all its heat declining.
> Two birds hard to identify against
> the solar flare acrobat in what may well presage reproductive attachment.
>
Douglas Barbour
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