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Collected Poetry

    (rd king dot net)
poetry and digital art

In California

  Estuary 


On the black ledge of the sand bank
black silhouettes pass arm in arm
against the thinning, crepuscular sky
and the metallic water.  The rocky point
has gone black to the water's edge
and back along the beach to the cypress,
to its wind-shorn, black silhouette.
A dozen gulls bend their black wings
into the failing, yellow-orange sky.
Pale smoke rises from bonfires scattered
around the cove.  Through the umbra
a man carries a cooler down the beach.
A child screams, then giggles, waving madly
two sparklers burning silver and green—
and when her screams reach across the estuary
they are muted enough not to disturb
some gulls standing about in inch-deep water.
Little fish are feeding on brush gnats.
Little splashes pop from the estuary
but even this does not interest the gulls.
A rocket whines through the smoke and bursts
above the cove.  More rockets whine.  The moon
rises above the mountains to the south
and goes full.  It back-lights the conifers
on the ridge in a yielding way.  Boom.  Boom.
But who needs the moon on Independence Day?




 
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