Pensacola Dunes at Dawn
Over dunes in pre-dawn dark, long ago I climbed
to greet moaning sea rhythm, waves, and shells Â
on my own for the first time.
The sky drank away the darkness, while my feet
pock-marked the sand with pools of brassy light. Peaking,
the sun oranged the sand, gathered strength, split the sky,
and I saw the gulls, hundreds in the sepia gloam,
breathing tail-to-bill-still. With light details feathered in;
their group-body became beaks, feet, wings…
A scream of sun erupted red without sound,
and spewed pink cloud, gave green to grass,
and on the water rained down blue.
White, like a ream of paper thrown in wind,
the gulls together took flight.
Left unclaimed in this new world awash in light,
I tried to find which dune I’d climbed,
until at last I grasped that it too was past.