"plovers" poems
Willets cull the seawall
snapper on the grill
rock ***** swoon
in shallow lagoons
long boats pass
under quiet
palm shade
Plovers dance and flutter
handrails frayed and torn
graffiti spots
at lovers rock
frigate-birds fall
from a high
noon sun
Thatched roof on a mud wall
fish flags settle score
anchors arch
in front line march
pillar cracks form
under rust brown scars
Elegant tern and grebe
watchmen fall in cue
children play
on crested waves
whimbrels and notchers
perch above Tentaciones
Striped pelícanos
the bandits of the sea!
merchants grow
in steady flow
siblings jostle
in a tide cooled sand
Heerman gull and boobie
durango smoke in yurt
boiler shrimp
and puffer blimp
castle buckets and scrapers
under a dusk light cheroot
Six pulls on a lead line
painted toes in sand
shearwater run
in a rainbow sun
the portly mexicano
flaunts his tacos
and wares
Rooster house for swordfish
bamboo shoots and sails
broken shells
and ocean swells
rise
on the
perfect
La Ropa bay
Apr 14, 2017
Apr 14, 2017 at 2:22 PM UTC
the drama in a ****** of crows
the clueless jive of the chickadee
the serious expression of the phoebe
hide and seek flickers
overly dramatic plovers
sleek kestrels, scanning the meadow
gulls always headed somewhere
the mystery of owls
robins, Art Carney-like
nuthatches that waddle through the air
an advertisement of goldfinches
vile, surly winged jays
waxwings, safe within their clique
ospreys, fat on minnows
snapshot herons always posing
patient vultures, ever on call
the perfect beasts to rule this world
they reveal personalities
to this lifetime observer
Feb 24, 2013
Feb 24, 2013 at 10:07 AM UTC
Somewhere seabirds pipe and bleat,
gathered on a dark low tide.
Shapes and shadows line the fleet,
cold and calling.
In the shore hide facing north
I'm focussing black ten-by-forties,
hunched against the wall for warmth;
the tide still falling.
Looking out, I'm looking back,
thirty years have ebbed away;
the boy, his joy, his haversac,
his notebook scrawling;
I see him, tremulous, wild-eyed,
among the plovers, curlew, knot,
a loosed dog shakes them and he flies,
the seawall salt sting cuts and dries;
there's no recalling.
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 6:55 PM UTC
Three Voices [together]. Hurry to bless the hands that play,
The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
O masters of the glittering town!
O! lay the shrilly trumpet down,
Though drunken with the flags that sway
Over the ramparts and the towers,
And with the waving of your wings.
First Voice. Maybe they linger by the way.
One gathers up his purple gown;
One leans and mutters by the wall -
He dreads the weight of mortal hours.
Second Voice. O no, O no! they hurry down
Like plovers that have heard the call.
Third Voice. O kinsmen of the Three in One,
O kinsmen, bless the hands that play.
The notes they waken shall live on
When all this heavy history's done;
Our hands, our hands must ebb away.
Three Voices [together]. The proud and careless notes live on,
But bless our hands that ebb away.
1.4k
Three Voices [together]. Hurry to bless the hands that play,
The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
O masters of the glittering town!
O! lay the shrilly trumpet down,
Though drunken with the flags that sway
Over the ramparts and the towers,
And with the waving of your wings.
First Voice. Maybe they linger by the way.
One gathers up his purple gown;
One leans and mutters by the wall --
He dreads the weight of mortal hours.
Second Voice. O no, O no! they hurry down
Like plovers that have heard the call.
Third Voice. O kinsmen of the Three in One,
O kinsmen, bless the hands that play.
The notes they waken shall live on
When all this heavy history's done;
Our hands, our hands must ebb away.
Three Voices [together]. The proud and careless notes live on,
But bless our hands that ebb away.
1.2k
Blessed are the poorly, for theirs is the kingdom of mudflats
The dispirited streak turgid waters
sinuously, through unsettled feelings
in the wake of boats shedding
filaments of fuel,
sheen on a turbid infusion
and the cordgrass nods a resilience
or an apathy as the silt settles
on their Piscean gleam
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see a salted heaven
Angelic Menhaden of the Atlantic,
are silvery stretches of scale,
dulled in death under a festering sun
and the retreating tide of dying waters
brined in ocean, freshwater spirited
to secret spaces, some dammed crevasse,
now tumultuous fate in a salted heaven
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled
At the Tabgha of this intertidal palette
Cattails whisper beatitudes
latched onto the tails of wind gusts
and the plovers descended
in a litany of bird song
amassed like the manna
trailing tidal waters
as the sea swallows herself.
Blessed are the herons, the mallards,
the geese. Time is measured
in the passage of fish that
cycle themselves through the innards of birds
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the rocks
The meek Menhaden, leaped
onto the rocks that hemmed the inlet,
escaping the hungry habits of herons.
They inherited Earth in agony
pounding a rocky surface,
but the air I swim, had no water.
I prodded these Menhaden of the Rock
to the fringe of retreating tides,
and they leaped to die once more
to breathe water that had no air
Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted
Blessed is the discomfiture
of my brackish tears
that streak marsh faces
as fish struggle out of dead water.
I take comfort I don't inhabit
tainted places or do I take comfort,
all places are the tint of poison,
the gleam of a genesis of sorrow
Jun 6, 2021
Jun 6, 2021 at 3:36 PM UTC
*creepy night river awake like a fever
as fireflies glow in furtive morse code
the eerie evening commands silence
in the hollow empty spaces yielded
in sonorous silences by a yawning dearth
of everything that's sacred, pure and sweet
once there was raw laughter and joy here
and weavers wove rich tales of fat worms
for their pampered nestlings afloat on air
once there was life and presence here
but now small spaces abound in this vast absence
of sunshine smiles and catwalk swinging
now it's plovers, owls and night jars galore
as their apocalyptic cries smite the night
like a plague in New Canaan where glory
is never too far away from the surface gloss
of a loveliness kidnapped by the salacious gods
of lewd desires and morbid libidos alive in tales
that are forever testifying to the loud presence
of envious divinities on a free ride upon our egos
everything is gone now but the thunderous silence
and the smiles that lit up our days are now but a memory
of wan looks and faded joys clad in the hollow feelings of pain
and that's all that ever remains when our futile antics are done*
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 7:20 PM UTC
VII
This is my end
surely this is
the end of it all
all I know is here
and though I am
young this is the end
of life as I know it
now and soon I will
see my home no more
for this is my end
here where I shelter
from all I cannot
think beyond this ending
surely the end of all
I know is here
and will be gone
(after a cine still from 1930 of a St Kllda woman)
XVIIIa
house above the hut
of shadows holds itself
against the relentless wind
on so open a shore
islands and inlets beyond
reasonable number stand
before its policies
its promontory land
Up on the third floor
light fills every corner
expelling its shadows
to the hut held
within its sight
XVIIIb
slowly the darkness
reveals less than
a shadow thrown
against a plastered wall
inside silenced from the wind
an image grows as the eyes
succumb to less than light
used to looking Suggestion
and the memory of outside
supply the rest
(two poems connected by Chris Drury’s Hut of Shadows on North Uist)
XIX
following footsteps
crisp in the sand
hour-fresh from tide-fall
now the shadows form
in the weight of press
the imprint mark
different with every
fall of limb and claw
the 3-pronged bird-foot
the sandaled human
step singular one
before another after
another until perspective
conceals and merges
into distant sand
**
silence suddenly
the ringed plovers
hold their breath
then chorus
a chirping as they wade
together in their own
reflections
the water like glass
at their feet
mirroring
movement that light
hop for a few steps onto
a slight but sturdy island
tweet then terweet
inflected upwards
a questioning call
terweet?
XX1
the taste of salt sea
in the mouth
the touch of water
thick sea-water
on the legs between toes
the sharp cold plunge
immersion envelopment
sunlight throws a cascade
of bright steps across the sea
gradually merging into a band of light
ablaze on the horizon
at the base of distant Monarchs
a silhouette of massed rock
rises from the sea crowned
by static clouds decorating the sky
gentle white ermine-soft
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 3:40 AM UTC
Stones bulk large:
depleted plovers
scrape their smaller partners
into minute curves and ramps.
This junction
when the bird's weight
******* and ties the shale in patterns
is the sea lords' making.
Stones sit on
like rigid eyes:
their stare worn silly
by the sea's corrosive pull,
their grating interplay --
uncanny masochism,
while the human heel
depletes the simple curve of eggs.
Jul 7, 2016
Jul 7, 2016 at 3:16 AM UTC
A singeing bleak...
Eye water, colors from thistle gripped nothings
Numb from a dissident space
Absence is minded by pale phased etchings
Embellishing braids of cinnamon briar, while
flushing the tumbles of Old Man’s Beard.
Mercury drops...
a Starling backed brush to the blackening fields
all riddled with meddling shoals
Turned ermine surrenders a rumour
Of solstice, remembers the Ploughmen
The tread of the horses that folded the beds
Of the cold, tired Earth,
While, over, the Plovers wheel.
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 12:14 AM UTC
A new year just started with A fabulous and wonderful month ... January is not a lone month ,but It's always different with its Winters .... Blizzards , snows , rains , floods , and Too many things over there ... Woolen plovers are worn by people And woolen gloves too ... I feel differently with January's all thirty-one days ....
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 9:39 AM UTC
in the scraggy grass
beside the shearer's quarters
plovers made their nests
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 6:43 PM UTC
*Champagne seas , beachside dreams
Silver plovers and pelican brothers working -
the musical shore
Young people occupied with white sands , sunshine occupied with emerald waters , white clouds caressing the gulf .. Old folks in love* ...
Dec 5, 2017
Dec 5, 2017 at 12:18 PM UTC
...I'm all mixt up, am I?!
(sonnet #MMMMMMMMMCCCXXXI)
Sweet blue skies with soft gilded clouds t'avail,
Red Maples' baby leaves now flutter hence
So lightly, and how dandelions thence
With sunny yellow heads dot green lawns' trail
To yonder as songs flit and call like bail
From every bush, tree, covert, nook, a sense
Of all we cherished in that note, no scents
Of pine, fresh grass nor clover to inhale.
But how the lake now ripples as winds stir
Across its face, the sparrows gaily too
'Non calling as geese rest. If plovers cure
Night's blackness, how frogs chorus through
The welcome touch of chill. And Shakespeare, poor
As subterfuge, remains cloaked. What is new?
23Apr25e
May 3, 2025
May 3, 2025 at 8:21 PM UTC