Hawk-Watchers

There must be a collective noun

for hawk-watchers on a mountain.

Drove? Paddling? Sloth? Bask? Clowder?

Mostly men in late middle age,

beards and baseball caps, sporting

binoculars and spotting scopes

worth more than my house. We note

their focus, their fixation on dots

barely discernible from cloud

above the gloomy neighboring peak.

You’re impressed that they believe

that at such terrible distance

they can sort broad-shouldered

from red-tail hawk. You admit

you can hardly tell a hawk from

a handsaw, but we agree that

effete literary allusions

have no place amid the krummholz

and exposed granite ledge,

no currency with hawk-watchers

guzzling bottled water and gazing

into the misty ephemera

to mark their count on the board.

I’m surprised to see osprey

listed among the aeronauts

counted for the sake of counting.

You’re startled to note peregrines

among the various raptors,

since you thought them European.

We’re all friends in the bird-world,

fellow travelers in the blue.

That blue today is cloud-marbled

with an elegant texture absorbing

the long arcs of flight. The shadows

cast by the clouds shuffle across

the wooded landscape below us.     

We agree that even combined

our eyesight wouldn’t allow us

to join the count. Eleven hundred

birds so far this season, each

a construction so elaborate

nothing human can approach it,

our most agile acts of intellect

still falling well short of flight.

Weed-Words

A bold orange mat of seaweed

coughed up on the pebbly shore.

Peering into its stringy texture,

I can almost taste its origin

on the mud-bottom where snails

pimple the filtered sunlight

and crabs stalk about and sneer.

You doubt that crabs actually sneer,

but admit they raise their large claws

with defiance, no matter the threat.

I don’t want to suggest that all such

gestures evolve toward the human,

but their weight outweighs the creature

itself. This mass of tangled weed

looks like the discarded toupee

of a disgruntled giant, maybe

a cyclops tired of seeing

the world in two dimensions.

Maybe you could try on a fistful

to cap your plain brown coiffure.

You don’t want this sea-slime mess

crowning your simple outlook?

I’d try it myself, but my lack

of dignity is landlocked, shy

of such brazen sea-wrought colors.

If I had the courage of a crab

or the persistence of a snail

I’d discard my ordinary clothes

and cloak myself in seaweed

and stalk abroad like Poseidon

in his entire godly anger.

I’d frighten the locals and laugh

a full-chested laugh you’d admire—

the only manly expression

your womanly wit couldn’t best.

An April Genre Scene

Shipping containers heaped six

stories high shade sunbathers

at Pleasure Bay. Commerce smiles

more convincingly than the sun

as I savor colorful boxes

of cheap goods shipped from China

to cripple our shy economy.

The old stone fort on the island

doesn’t challenge the huge black

container ships that arrive

once or twice a week to shed

loads trundled through Panama.

It also ignores tankers churning

further up the harbor to Chelsea

to vomit oil from Baton Rouge.

The sea-horizon crinkles in mist.

Wind shucks through the playground

where toddlers chitter and howl.

The curved line of beach flexes

a single great bicep to assert

the power of form over function.

A man walks a tiny dog along

the weed-line stitched by the tide.

The dog noses every shell or scrap

of trash, every torn strop of kelp.

I want to fold this genre scene

into my pocket and take it home

to examine under lamplight.

But those half-naked sun-lovers

forcing the season would object.

And the container ship unloading

its red and green and blue boxes

would shudder and tilt in the wash,

the ripples expanding all the way

to China, where someone important

might file an official complaint.